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Denial of Justice in International Law
Since the last comprehensive work devoted to denial of justice in international
law was published in 1938, the possibilities for prosecuting this offence have
evolved in fundamental ways. It is now settled law that States cannot disavow
international responsibility by arguing that their courts are independent of the
government. Even more importantly, the doors of international tribunals have
swung wide open to admit claimants other than states: non-governmental organisations, corporations and individuals.
A vast number of new treaties for the protection of investment allow private
foreign investors to seise international tribunals to claim denial of justice. This
has given rise to intense controversy. There are those who consider that the very
prospect of an international tribunal passing judgment on the workings of
national courts constitutes an intolerable affront to sovereignty. Others believe
that such must precisely be the role of international tribunals if the rule of law is
to prosper.
The proponents of imperial might once found it convenient to drape the
exercise of power in virtuous shrouds, as in the Don Pacifico affair in 1850,
when Palmerston justified the seizure of all ships in the harbour of Piraeus (in
retribution for the failure of the Greek government to grant redress to a British
subject) by his Civis Romanus Sum oration in the House of Commons. Today
gunships have been replaced by international tribunals, and so even those who
have no might may have the right to seise international jurisdictions to question
the conduct of courts in the most powerful countries. The tables may therefore be
turned, as when the US in 2002 found itself taken to task on account of alleged
denials of justice suffered by two Canadian investors at the hands of the courts of
Massachusetts and Mississippi.
This book examines the modern understanding of denial of justice.
Denial of Justice in
International Law
Jan Paulsson
  
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge  , UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521851183
© Jan Paulsson 2005
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Authorities
Abbreviations
page viii
ix
xxv
1 The renaissance of a cause of action
1
2 The historical evolution of denial of justice
Absence of a universal standard
Right and might in the law of nations
Objections of weak states
The Calvo Doctrine and Clause
The impulse to limit the scope of denial of justice
Modern political realities
Summary
10
10
13
18
20
24
26
36
3 Three fundamental developments
State responsibility for the conduct of the judiciary
Denial of justice by non-judicial authority
Extension of locus standi
38
38
44
53
4 The modern definition of denial of justice
Overview
The difficult emergence of a general international standard
An evolving standard
Relationship with specific rights created by international law
No responsibility for misapplication of national law
Demise of substantive denial of justice
Judgments in breach of international law
Judgments in breach of national law
57
57
59
68
69
73
81
84
87
v
Table of contents
Confirmation of the distinction
State responsibility for subdivisions
Attempts at codification
Summary
90
90
93
98
5
Exhaustion of local remedies and denial of justice
The case for exhaustion
Loewen and the problem of waiver
Exhaustion as a substantive requirement of denial of justice
The qualification of reasonableness
Application of the reasonableness qualification in Loewen
No fresh starts at the international level
Effect of forks in the road
Summary
100
100
102
107
112
120
126
127
130
6
Denial of justice by outside interference
Jurisprudence under human rights treaties
Denial of access to justice
Absolute denial of access through state immunity
Targeted legislation
Repudiation by a state of an agreement to arbitrate
Governmental interference
Manipulation of the composition of courts
Excessive public pressure
Failure to execute judgments
Inadequate measures against perpetrators of crimes against
foreigners
Wrongful measures of physical coercion
131
133
134
138
147
149
157
163
164
168
Denial of justice by the decision-maker
Refusal to judge
Delay
Illegitimate assertion of jurisdiction
Fundamental breaches of due process
Discrimination or prejudice
Corruption
Arbitrariness
Retroactive application of laws
Gross incompetence
Pretence of form
Summary
176
176
177
178
180
192
195
196
199
200
202
204
7
vi
170
173
Table of contents
8 Remedies and sanctions
General principles: restitutio, damnum emergens, lucrum cessans
Vicarious damage and deterrence
Illustrative precedents
Amco II and proximate cause
The time value of money
Summary
207
207
212
215
218
226
226
9 The menace of ‘obscure arbiters’?
Anti-international challenges
Responses to the anti-international critiques
The urgency of prudence
Respect for the ‘obscure arbiter’ as a test of commitment
to the international rule of law
The early American example
Conclusions
Summary
228
228
232
241
Bibliography
Index
266
274
vii
252
256
261
265
Acknowledgements
This study grew out of the three Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lectures
given in Cambridge in November 2003. I thankfully acknowledge the
encouragement and support of Sir Elihu Lauterpacht, the founder of
Cambridge University’s Lauterpacht Research Centre for International
Law, and his successors as directors of the Centre, Professor James
Crawford SC and Daniel Bethlehem QC.
I have benefited immensely from the constructive criticism and wise
counsel of friends who have commented on the lectures and on their
development into this volume. Since some of them prefer anonymity, all
my expressions of gratitude will remain private.
viii
Authorities
International Treaties and Conventions
Bilateral treaties and conventions
1667
Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Great Britain and Spain,
13 May [1667–1668] Consolidated Treaty Series 63
13
1794
Jay Treaty between Great Britain and United States, 19 November,
8 Stat. 116
131, 258
1839
Convention for the adjustment of claims of citizens of the United
States against Mexico between United States and Mexico, signed
11 April, ratified 7 April 1840, Moore, Arbitrations 4771
162, 202
1863
Convention for the settlement of claims between United States and
Peru, signed 12 January 1863, ratified 18 April, Moore, Arbitrations
4786
169, 213
1866
Convention for a re-opening of the claims of citizens of the United
States against Venezuela under the treaty of April 25, between
the United States and Venezuela, signed 5 December 1885, 3
June 1889, Moore, Arbitrations 4810
23
1869
Convention for the settlement of claims between Mexico and the
United States, signed 4 July 1868, ratified 1 February, Moore,
Arbitrations 4773
23, 131
1871
Treaty between the United States and Great Britain, 8 May,
J. B. Davis, Treaties and Conventions concluded between the United States
of America and other Powers since July 4, 1776, at p. 678
262
ix
Table of authorities
1880
Convention concerning settlement of certain claims of the citizens
of either country against the other between France and the United
States, signed 15 January 1880, ratified 23 June, Moore, Arbitrations
4715
131, 260
1892
Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation between Italy and
Colombia, 27 October, reprinted in Ubertazzi, Galli and Sanna,
Codice del diritto d’autore
Article 21
21
1913
Treaty of 1913 between Honduras and Italy, 8 December, Trattati
Convenzioni vol. XXII at p. 391
22–3
1991
Agreement between Argentina and France for the Promotion and
Reciprocal Protection of Investments, July
128
1999
Treaty concerning the Encouragement and Reciprocal Protection of
Investment between the United States and Bahrain, 29 September,
(2000) 39 ILM 252
70
Multinational treaties and conventions
1899
Convention for the Peaceful Resolution of International Disputes,
adopted at the First Hague Peace Conference, The Hague,
29 July, [1898–1899] Consolidated Treaty Series 410
23
1902
Convention relative to the Rights of Aliens, Mexico City,
29 January
24
1907
Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes
(Porter Convention), adopted at the Second Hague Peace
Conference, The Hague, 18 October, [1907] Consolidated
Treaty Series 234
22–3
1933
Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States,
Montevideo, 26 December
17
Article 8
x
Table of authorities
1919
Treaty of Neuilly, Neuilly-sur-Seine, 27 November (Treaty of Peace
between Bulgaria and the Allied Powers of the First World War) 119
1945
United Nations Charter, San Francisco, 26 June, Treaty Series (US
Department of State) No 993
93, 173
Article 13(1)(a)
93
1950
Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental
Freedoms (European Convention on Human Rights), Rome,
4 November, (1955) 213 United Nations Treaty Series 221 199, 218
Article 6
136, 141, 169
Article 6(1)
133, 134, 139, 140, 146, 149, 169, 178
Article 6(3)(b)
136
Article 13
178
Article 34
54
Article 50
220
Protocol 1, Article 1
1958
Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral
Awards (the New York Convention), New York, 10 June, (1959)
330 United Nations Treaty Series 3
85, 131, 176, 248
1965
Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes between States
and Nationals of other States (ICSID Convention), Washington,
18 March, (1966) 575 United Nations Treaty Series 159 28, 103, 247
Article 27
34
Article 42
219
Article 52
128, 247
1966
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, New York,
16 December, (1976) 999 United Nations Treaty Series 171 5, 9, 35
Article 14(1)
134
1969
American Convention on Human Rights, San José, 22 November,
(1979) 1144 United Nations Treaty Series 144
35
Article 8
134
1981
African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, Nairobi, 27 June,
(1988) 1520 United Nations Treaty Series 217, (1982) ILM 58
35
xi
Table of authorities
1992
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 1992, (1993) 32
ILM 605 28, 43, 68–9, 107, 110, 111, 142, 183–5, 188, 191, 230–2,
237–41, 251, 263
Article 201
42–3
Article 1101
43
Article 1101(1)
28, 42
Article 1105
6, 42, 190
Article 1105(1)
142–3
Article 1116
125
Article 1119
251
Article 1121
43, 107
Article 1121(1)(b)
103
Article 1126
246
1994
Protocol of Colonia for the Promotion and Reciprocal Protection
of Investments Within MERCOSUR, Colonia do Sacramento,
17 January (concluded under the Asunction Treaty establishing
Mercosur, 26 March 1991 (1991) 30 ILM 1041)
28
1991
Buenos Aires Protocol on the Protection and Promotion of
Investments made by Countries That are not Parties to
MERCOSUR, Buenos Aires, 8 August 1994 (concluded under
the Asunction Treaty establishing Mercosur, 26 March (1991) 30
ILM 1041)
28
Municipal Legislation
France
Civil Code
Article 4
New Code of Civil Procedure
Article 1493
Penal Code
Article 434-7-1
Law No. 86972 of 19 August 1986, Journal officiel, 22 August 1986,
10190
Article 9
xii
11
115
11
264
Table of authorities
Greece
Military Criminal Code
Law No. 1701/1987, Official Gazette 25 May 1987
136, 148
Honduras
Constitution of 1982, 11 January 1982, (Decree No. 131 of 1982)
29
Indonesia
Supreme Court Regulation no. 1990/1 (‘Indonesia’, in (1991) XVI
International Handbook on Commercial Arbitration 398, at p. 400)
Article 5(4)
85
Italy
Civil Code
Article 2043
114
Switzerland
Constitution fédérale de la Confédération suisse, 18 April 1999
Article 8
Article 9
Loi Fédérale sur le droit international privé
Article1 177(2)
12
12
264
United Kingdom
Sex Discrimination Act 1975
State Immunity Act 1978
139
139, 141
United States
United States Code, Chapter 11 ‘Bankruptcy’, 11 USC
Trade Act of 2002, Public Law No. 107–210, 116 Stat. 933
(6 August 2002)
Division B, Title XXI
Tort Claims Act (Massachusetts) PL 258
xiii
43, 122
245
248
142
Table of authorities
Decisions of International Courts and Tribunals
European Court of Human Rights
Agoudimos & Cefallonian Sky Shipping Co. v. Greece, 28 June 2001,
[2001] ECHR 402
200
Ashingdane v. United Kingdom, 28 May 1985, (1985) 7 EHRR 528 140, 144
Carbonara & Ventura v. Italy, 30 May 2000, [2000] ECHR 205
200
Fogarty v. United Kingdom, 21 November 2001, (2002) 34 EHRR 12 138–40
Golder v. United Kingdom, 21 February 1975, (1975) 1 EHRR
524
134–5, 145
Gregory v. United Kingdom, 25 February 1997, (1998) 25 EHRR 577
126
Hadjianastassiou v. Greece, 16 December 1992, (1993) 16 EHRR 219 136
McElhinney v. Ireland, 21 November 2001, (2001) 34 EHRR 322 140, 146
Philis v. Greece, 27 August 1991, (1991) 13 EHRR 741
137–8, 211
Sramek v. Austria, 22 October 1984, [1984] ECHR 12
220
Stran Greek Refineries and Stratis Andreadis v. Greece, 9 December 1994,
(1995) 19 EHRR 293
148, 150, 226
Streletz, Kessler & Krenz v. Germany, 22 March 2001, (2001) 33
EHRR 31
199
S. W. v. United Kingdom and C. R. v. United Kingdom, 22 November
1995, (1996) 21 EHRR 363
199
Timofeyev v. Russia, 23 October 2003, [2003] ECHR 546 168, 169, 211
ICJ and PCIJ
Anglo-Norwegian Fisheries case (UK v. Norway), 1951 ICJ Reports 116
33
Barcelona Traction Light and Power Co. Ltd (Belgium v. Spain) (Preliminary
Objections), 1964 ICJ Reports 6; (New Application: 1962) Second
Phase, 1970 ICJ Reports 4
2, 49, 65, 83, 184, 255
Certain German Interests in Polish Upper Silesia (Germany v. Poland)
(The Merits), (1935) PCIJ, Series A, No. 7, 5
33
Certain Norwegian Loans (France v. Norway), 1957 ICJ Reports 9
102
Chorzów Factory case (Germany v. Poland ), (1928) PCIJ, Series A,
No. 17
208, 214–15, 221, 224, 225, 227
Eastern Greenland case (Denmark v. Norway), (1933) PCIJ Series
A/B, No. 53
263
Elettronica Sicula SpA (ELSI) (US v. Italy), 1989 ICJ Reports 15 102, 196, 224
LaGrand (Germany v. US ) Provisional Measures, 1999 ICJ Reports 9
91
xiv
Table of authorities
Land and Maritime Boundary Between Cameroon and Nigeria Cameroon v.
Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea intervening, 2002 ICJ Reports 3
235
Losinger Co. Case (Switzerland v. Yugoslavia), (1935) PCIJ, Series C,
No. 78, 7
13
The Nottebohm case (Liechtenstein v. Guatemala), 1955 ICJ Reports 4
33
Panevezys-Saldutiskis Railway (Estonia v. Lithuania), (1939) PCIJ,
Series A/B, No. 76, 3
102, 116
Inter-American Court of Human Rights
Constitutional Court case (Aguirre Roca, Rey Terry, and Revoredo Marsano v.
Peru) (Merits), 31 January 2001, Inter-American Court of
Human Rights, Series C, No. 71
118, 234
Ivcher Bronstein v. Peru (Merits), 6 February 2001, Inter-American
Court of Human Rights, Series C, No. 74
234
Olmedo Bustos et al. v. Chile (Merits), 5 February 2001, Inter-American
Court of Human Rights, Series C, No. 73
44, 236
Iran–US claims tribunal
Iran v. US, Case No. A11, 597-A11-FT, award, 7 April 2000
Oil Field of Texas, Inc. v. Iran, award, 8 October 1986, 12 Iran–US
Claims Tribunal Report 308
224
110
Other
Prosecutor v. Delalic and others, 20 February 2001, Appeals Chamber
of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia,
Case No. IT-96-21-A
126
Decisions of Municipal Courts
Canada
Attorney-General of Canada v. S. D. Myers, Federal Court of Canada,
13 January 2004, 8 ICSID Reports 194
229, 246
Mexico v. Feldman Karpa, Superior Court of Justice, Ontario, 3
December 2003, 8 ICSID Reports 500
246
xv
Table of authorities
Mexico v. Metalclad Corporation, Supreme Court of British Columbia,
2 May 2001, 5 ICSID Reports 236
111, 229, 246
Federal Republic of Germany
Decision of 9 March 1978, Wertpapier-Mitteilungen 573 (1978)
250
France
Conseil d’Etat, Garde des sceaux, Ministre de la justice/M. Magiera,
28 June 2002
178, 218
National Iranian Oil Co. (NIOC) v. Israel, 2002 Revue de l’arbitrage 427 12, 155
UNESCO v. Boulois, 1999 Revue de l’arbitrage 343
145–6
Netherlands
Indonesia v. Himpurna California Energy Ltd, et al. Order of the
President of the Arrondissementsrechtbank (Court of First Instance),
The Hague, 21 September 1999, (2000) XXV Yearbook Commercial
Arbitration 469
152
New Zealand
Aquaculture Corp. v. New Zealand Green Mussel Co. Ltd, [1990] 3
NZLR 299
245
United Kingdom
La Société du Gaz de Paris v. Les Armateurs Français, House of Lords,
(1925) 23 Ll L Rep 209
144
Settebello Ltd v. Banco Totta and Acores, Court of Appeal of England
[1985] 1 WLR 1050
148, 150
United States
DiRienzo v. Chodos, 232 F.3d 49 (2nd Circuit) (2000)
144
Lafayette Place Associates v. Boston Redevelopment Authority & another, 427
Mass. 509; 694 NE 2d 820 (1998)
76, 143
xvi
Table of authorities
Marbury v. Madison, US Supreme Court, 5 US (1 Cranch) 137 (1803)
50, 237
Pennzoil Co. v. Texaco, Inc., US Supreme Court, 481 US 1 (1987)
124
Poznik v. Massachusetts Medical Professional Insurance Association, 417
Mass. 48; 628 NE 2d 1 (1994)
143
Rock Island, Ark. & La. R. R. v. US, US Supreme Court, 254 US 141
(1920)
77
Sawtelle v. Waddell & Reed, Inc., No. 2330 (NY App. Div. 1st Dept.),
13 February 2003
200
Arbitral Awards
International centre for settlement of investment disputes
Amco Asia Corp., Pan American Development, Ltd and PT Amco Indonesia v.
Indonesia, award, 20 November 1984, 1 ICSID Reports 416
(Foighel, Rubin, Goldman (presiding)); decision on annulment,
16 May 1986, 1 ICSID Reports 509 (Feliciano, Giardina, SeidlHohenveldern (presiding)); award in the resubmitted case, 5 June
1990, 1 ICSID Reports 569; rectification 10 October 1990, 1 ICSID
Reports 638 (Lalonde, Magid, Higgins (presiding)) 106, 109, 171, 250
American Manufacturing and Trading, Inc. v. Zaire, award, 21 February
1997, 5 ICSID Reports 11 (Golsong, Mbaye, Sucharitkul
(presiding))
47, 171
Asian Agricultural Products Ltd. v. Sri Lanka, award, 27 June 1990, 4
ICSID Reports 245 (Goldman, Asante, El-Kosheri (presiding))
47, 106, 109, 171
Benvenuti and Bonfant srl v. Congo, 8 August 1980, 1 ICSID Reports 330
(Bystricky, Razafindralambo, Troller (presiding))
106, 109
CME Czech Republic BV v. Czech Republic, partial award, 13 September
2001, 9 ICSID Reports [forthcoming]; award on damages,
14 March 2003, 9 ICSID Reports [forthcoming] (Schwebel,
Hándl, Kühn (presiding))
184, 213, 239, 243
Compañı́a de Aguas del Aconquija S. A. and Vivendi Universal (formerly
Compagnie Générale des Eaux) v. Argentina, award, 21 November
2000, 5 ICSID Reports 296; (2001) 40 ILM 426 (Buergenthal,
Trooboff, Rezek (presiding)); decision on annulment, 3 July
2002, 6 ICSID Reports 340; (2002) 41 ILM 1135 (Crawford,
Fernàndez-Rozas, Fortier (presiding))
33, 87, 127, 128, 251
xvii
Table of authorities
Ethyl Corporation v. Canada, award on jurisdiction, 24 June 1998,
38 ILM 708 (Brower, Lalonde, Böckstiegel (presiding))
43
Feldman v. Mexico, award, 16 December 2002, 7 ICSID Reports 341
(Covarrubias Bravo, Gantz, Kerameus (presiding)) 70, 110, 246, 254
Generation Ukraine Inc. v. Ukraine, award, 16 September 2003,
(2005) 44 ILM 404 (Salpius, Voss, Paulsson (presiding))
7, 109
Klöckner Industrie-Anlagen GmbH et al. v. Cameroon and SOCAME,
annulment decision, 3 May 1985, 2 ICSID Reports 95 (El-Kosheri,
Seidl-Hohenveldern, Lalive (presiding))
250
Lauder v. Czech Republic, award, 3 September 2001, 9 ICSID Reports
[forthcoming] (Cutler, Klein, Briner (presiding))
223, 243
The Loewen Group, Inc. and Raymond L. Loewen v. United States of
America, decision on jurisdiction, 5 January 2001, 7 ICSID
Reports 434 (Fortier, Mikva, Mason (presiding)), award, 26 June
2003, 7 ICSID Reports 451, decision on request for a
supplementary decision, 13 September 2004, 10 ICSID Reports
[forthcoming] (Mustill, Mikva, Mason
(presiding))
6, 41–3, 51, 62, 92, 100, 102–7, 112, 115,
120–7, 182–5, 187–92, 193–5, 201, 208–9,
227–32, 253
Metalclad Corp. v. Mexico, award, 30 August 2000, 5 ICSID Reports
209 (Civiletti, Siqueiros, Lauterpacht (presiding))
111, 246
Methanex Corp. v. United States of America, partial award, 7 August
2002, 7 ICSID Reports 239 (Rowley, Christopher, Veeder
(presiding))
231, 239, 251
Mondev International Ltd v. United States of America, award, 11 October
2002, 6 ICSID Reports 192 (Crawford, Schwebel, Stephen
(presiding))
68–9, 76–7, 111, 139, 142–5, 181, 199–200, 253
Pope & Talbot Inc. v. Canada, award on damages, 31 May 2002, 7
ICSID Reports 148 (Greenberg, Belman, Dervaird (presiding)) 68, 239
Robert Azinian, et al. v. Mexico, award, 1 November 1999, 5 ICSID
Reports 269 (Civiletti, von Wobeser, Paulsson (presiding)) 7, 80, 110,
118, 237
SGS Société Générale de Surveillance S. A. v. Pakistan, decision on
jurisdiction, 6 August 2003, 8 ICSID Reports 406 (Faurès,
Thomas, Feliciano (presiding))
112, 129
SGS Société Générale de Surveillance S. A. v. Philippines, decision on
objections to jurisdiction, 29 January 2004, 8 ICSID Reports
518 (Crawford, Crivellaro, El-Kosheri (presiding))
33, 112, 129
xviii
Table of authorities
Southern Pacific Properties (Middle East) Limited v. Egypt, award, 20 May
1992, 3 ICSID Reports 189 (El Mehdi, Pietrowski, Jiménez de
Aréchaga (presiding))
35, 210
Waste Management, Inc. v. Mexico, award, 30 April 2004, (2004) 43
ILM 967 (Civiletti, Magallón Gómez, Crawford (presiding)) 78, 153
Wena Hotels Ltd v. Egypt, award, 8 December 2000, 6 ICSID Reports
89 (Fadlallah, Wallace, Leigh (presiding))
47, 171
Other awards
Abraham Solomon (US v. Panama), 29 June 1933, VI RIAA 370 164, 166
Case of the ‘Ada’ (US v. Mexico), Moore, Arbitrations 3143
101
Administrative Decision No. II (US v. Germany), 1 November 1923, VII
RIAA 23
224
Administrative Decision No. V (US v. Germany), 31 October 1924, VII
RIAA 119
183
Ambatielos Claim, (Greece v. UK), 6 March 1956, XII RIAA 83
8, 127, 134, 192, 256
Antoine Fabiani (no. 1) (France v. Venezuela), Moore, Arbitrations 4878
113, 137, 164, 168, 177, 208, 211, 215–16, 219, 223
Antoine Fabiani (no. 2) (France v. Venezuela), 31 July 1905, X RIAA 83 168
Arbitration under Article 181 of the Treaty of Neuilly (Greece v. Bulgaria),
4 November 1931, (1934) 28 AJIL 760
119
Ballistini (US v. Venezuela), J. H. Ralston, Venezuelan Arbitrations of
1903 at p. 503
137
Bechtel Enterprises International (Bermuda) Ltd. et al. v. Overseas Private
Investment Corporation, award, 3 September 2003, (2004) 16 World
Trade and Arbitration Materials 417 (Renfrew, Kay, Layton
(presiding))
153
Benteler v. Belgium (1984) Journal des Tribunaux 230
263
The Betsey, (US v. Great Britain), Moore, Arbitrations 3161
258
Blumhardt (US v. Mexico), Moore, Arbitrations 3146
101
Bronner case (US v. Mexico), Moore, Arbitrations 3134
201
Bullis case (US v. Venezuela), IX RIAA 231
174
Burn’s case (US v. Mexico), Moore, Arbitrations 3140
101, 119
Cantero Herrera v. Canevaro and Co., 25 May 1927, 1927–28 Annual
Digest of Public International Law Cases 219
40, 235, 256
xix
Table of authorities
Cayuga Indians case (US v. Great Britain), Fred K. Nielsen, American
and British Claims Arbitration under the Special Agreement of August 18,
1910 at p. 258
62
Chattin case (US v. Mexico), 23 July 1927, IV RIAA 282
45–6, 62, 175, 177–8, 180–1, 220, 253
Coles and Croswell (Great Britain v. Haiti), 31 May 1886, 78 British
and Foreign State Papers 1305
196
Cotesworth and Powell (Great Britain v. Colombia), Moore, Arbitrations
2050
89, 217
The Croft case (UK v. Portugal), 7 February 1856, A. de Lapradelle
and N. Politis, Recueil des arbitrages internationaux, vol. II, 22
44
El Oro Mining and Railway Company (Limited) (Great Britain v. Mexico),
18 June 1931, V RIAA 191
178
El Triunfo (US v. El Salvador), 8 May 1902, XV RIAA 455
48–50, 52, 53, 99, 209–10
Estate of Hyacinthe Pellat (France v. Mexico), 7 June 1929, V RIAA 534
91
Finnish Ships case (Finland v. Great Britain), 9 May 1934, III RIAA
1479
117, 126, 144
G. A. Le More & Co. v. US, No. 211, Moore, Arbitrations 3232
260
The Garrison case (US v. Mexico), Moore, Arbitrations 3129
4, 259
G. G. & S. Howland v. Mexico, Moore, Arbitrations 3227
211
Green’s case (US v. Mexico), Moore, Arbitrations 3139
101
Himpurna California Energy Ltd v. Indonesia, interima ward, 26
September 1999; final award, 16 October 1999, extracts
in (2000) XXV ICCA Yearbook Commercial Arbitration 109
(de Fina, Abdurrasyid, Paulsson (presiding))
70, 150, 152
Himpurna California Energy Ltd. v. PT. (Persero) Perusahaan Listruik
Negara, award, 4 May 1999, (2000) XXV Yearbook Commercial
Arbitration 13 (de Fina, Setiawan SH, Paulsson (presiding))
7, 151
Jacob Idler v. Venezuela, Moore, Arbitrations 3491
19, 158, 179, 201, 217, 226
Janes case (US v. Mexico), Claims Commission, United States and
Mexico, Opinions of Commissioners, Washington 1927, 108
170
Jennings, Laughland & Co. v. Mexico, Moore, Arbitrations 3135
101
Jones’s case (US v. Spain), Moore, Arbitrations 3253
175
Kaiser case (US v. Mexico), Claims Commission, United States and
Mexico, Opinions of Commissioners, Washington 1929, 80
175
Lettie Charlotte Denham & Frank Parlin Denham (US v. Panama), 27 June
1933, VI RIAA 334
74
xx
Table of authorities
L. F. H. Neer and Pauline Neer (US v. Mexico), 15 October 1926, IV
RIAA 60
46, 68, 87
Lusitania cases (US v. Germany), 1 November 1923, VII RIAA 32
211
Marguerite de Joly de Sabla (US v. Panama), 29 June 1933, VI RIAA 358 88
Martini (Italy v. Venezuela), 3 May 1930, II RIAA 975
69, 72, 83, 208, 215, 219, 222
McCurdy (US v. Mexico), 21 March 1929, IV RIAA 418
220
The Mechanic (Corwin v. Venezuela), Moore, Arbitrations 3210
101
Minnie Stevens Eschauzier (Great Britain v. US ), 24 June 1931, V
RIAA 207
183
Montano (Peru v. US ), Moore, Arbitrations 1630
112, 169–70, 208
North American Dredging Company of Texas (US v. Mexico), 31 March
1926, IV RIAA 26
29, 30, 32
The Orient (US v. Mexico), Moore, Arbitrations 3229
4, 162, 202
Pelletier case (US v. Haiti), Moore, Arbitrations 1757
255
Poggioli (Italy v. Venezuela), J. H. Ralston, Venezuela Arbitrations of 1903
at p. 847
211
Revpower Ltd v. Shanghai Far-East Aero-Technology Import and Export
Corporation, unreported, discussed in J. Paulsson and Alastair
Crawford, ‘1994 Revision of CIETAC Rules Promises
Increased Neutrality in Arbitration in China’, (1994) 9(6)
Mealey’s International Arbitration Report 17
176, 215
Robert E. Brown (US v. Great Britain), 23 November 1923,
VI RIAA 120
48, 50, 52, 73, 102
R. T. Johnson (US v. Peru), Moore, Arbitrations 1656
53, 146
Ruden (US v. Peru), Moore, Arbitrations 1653
53, 115, 146
Sartori’s case (US v. Peru), Moore, Arbitrations 3120
213–14, 225
Selkirk’s case (US v. Mexico), Moore, Arbitrations 3130
173–4
Settenave Estaleiros Navais de Setubal SARL v. Settebello Ltd. (McCrindle,
Vischer, Brunner (presiding)), unpublished, described in
W. Laurence Craig, William W. Park and Jan Paulsson,
International Chamber of Commerce Arbitration at p. 104, note 28;
and in Settebello Ltd v. Banco Totta and Acores, Court of Appeal of
England [1985] 1 WLR 1050
148
Smith v. Marianao, 2 May 1929, (1930) 24 AJIL 384; II RIAA 915
218, 220, 222
Smith’s case (US v. Mexico), Moore, Arbitrations 3146
101
Société des Grands Travaux de Marseille v. East Pakistan Development
Corporation, award, (1980) V Yearbook Commercial Arbitration 177
(Andrew Martin QC, sole arbitrator)
147
xxi
Table of authorities
Spanish Zone of Morocco (UK v. Spain), 29 May 1923, II RIAA 617
255
Stetson’s case (US v. Mexico), Moore, Arbitrations 3131
173
Texaco Overseas Petroleum Company/California Asiatic Oil Co. v. Libya,
(1978) 17 ILM 1
215
William Gerald Chase (US v. Panama), 29 June 1933, VI RIAA
352
47, 164–5
The case of Yuille, Shortridge & Co. (Great Britain v. Portugal ), 21
October 1861, A. de Lapradelle and N. Politis, Recueil des
arbitrages internationaux vol. I, 78
38, 72, 75–6
Draft Conventions, Principles, Restatements, Rules, etc.
American Society of International Law/Harvard Law School
Draft Convention on the Law of Responsibility of States for
Damages Done in Their Territory to the Person or Property
of Foreigners, Harvard Law School, Research in International
Law, II, Responsibility of States (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1929);
(1929) 23 AJIL 133 (Special supplement)
Article 9
Draft Convention on the International Responsibility of States for
Injuries to Aliens, (1961) 55 AJIL 548
Article 6
95
96
International Law Commission (United Nations)
Draft Articles on Responsibility of States for internationally
wrongful acts, UN Doc. A/56/10 (2001)
56, 91
Article 4(1)
40, 91
Article 33(2)
56
Article 44
107, 111
Article 55
56
Draft Articles on Jurisdictional Immunities of States and Their
Property, UN Doc. A/46/10
Article 12
141
Draft Declaration on Rights and Duties of States, UN Doc. A/1251
Article 3
17
xxii
Table of authorities
North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA)
Free Trade Commission, Chapter 11 Interpretation, 31 July 2001,
6 ICSID Reports 367
239, 251
Free Trade Commission, Transparency Measures, (2005) 44
ILM 796
251
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
Draft Convention on the Protection of Foreign Property, (1968)
7 ILM 117
55
United Nations
Basic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary, adopted
by the Seventh United Nations Congress on the Prevention of
Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, UN Doc. A/CONF.
121/22/Rev.1, at p. 59
66, 157
Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers, adopted by the Eighth
United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the
Treatment of Offenders, UN Doc. A/CONF.144/28/Rev.1,
at p. 118
66, 157
Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States, General Assembly
Resolution A/RES/3281 (XXIX), adopted 12 December 1974
24
Declaration on the Human Rights of Individuals Who are not
Nationals of the Country in Which They Live, General Assembly
Resolution A/RES/40/144, adopted 13 December 1985.
9
Human rights in the administration of justice, General Assembly
resolution A/RES/43/153, adopted 8 December 1988
66
Human rights in the administration of justice, General Assembly
resolution A/RES/48/137, adopted 20 December 1993
66
Human rights in the administration of justice, General Assembly
resolution A/RES/58/183, adopted 18 March 2004
66
Independence and impartiality of the judiciary, jurors and assessors
and the independence of lawyers, Commission on Human Rights
resolution 2003/43, UN Doc. E/CN.4/2003/L.11/Add.4,
at p. 57
66
Statute of the International Law Commission, Annexed to General
Assembly Resolution 174(II), adopted 21 November 1947
Article 15
93
xxiii
Table of authorities
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, General Assembly
Resolution A/RES/217A (III), adopted 10 December 1948
Article 10
United Nations Commission on International Trade Law
Arbitration Rules, approved by GA Resolution 31/98,
(1976) 15 ILM 701
xxiv
5
152
Abbreviations
AJIL
Amco II
BYIL
de Visscher
ECHR
EHRR
Fitzmaurice
Freeman
ICC
ICJ
ICSID
ICSID Review
ILC
ILM
Loewen
American Journal of International Law
Amco Asia Corp., Pan American Development, Ltd. and PT
Amco Indonesia v. Republic of Indonesia, award in the
resubmitted case, 5 June 1990, 1 ICSID Reports 569
(Lalonde, Magid, Higgins (presiding))
British Yearbook of International Law
Charles de Visscher, ‘Le déni de justice en droit
international’ (1935) 54 Recueil des cours 370
European Court of Human Rights
European Human Rights Reports
Sir Gerald Fitzmaurice, ‘The Meaning of the Term
‘Denial of Justice’’ (1932) 13 BYIL 93
A. V. Freeman, The International Responsibility of States
for Denial of Justice (Longman, London/New York,
1938)
International Chamber of Commerce
International Court of Justice
International Centre for Settlement of Investment
Disputes
ICSID Review – Foreign Investment Law Journal
International Law Commission
International Legal Materials
The Loewen Group, Inc. and Raymond L. Loewen v. United
States of America, decision on jurisdiction, 5 January
2001, 7 ICSID Reports 434 (Fortier, Mivka, Mason
( presiding)), award, 26 June 2003, 7 ICSID Reports
451 (Mustill, Mikva, Mason ( presiding))
xxv
List of abbreviations
Mondev
Moore, Arbitrations
NAFTA
Oppenheim
PCIJ
Recueil des cours
RIAA
UN
Vattel
Mondev International Ltd v. United States of America,
award, 11 October 2002, 6 ICSID Reports 192
(Crawford, Schwebel, Stephen (presiding))
J. B. Moore, History and Digest of International
Arbitrations to which the United States Has Been a Party
(6 vols., Washington, DC: US Government Printing
Office, 1898)
North American Free Trade Agreeement
Sir Robert Jennings and Sir Arthur Watt (eds.),
Oppenheim’s International Law (9th edn, 2 vols.,
Harlow: Longman, 1992)
Permanent Court of International Justice
Recueil des cours de l’académie de droit international
Reports of International Arbitral Awards (United Nations)
United Nations
Emer (or Emmerich) de Vattel, The Law of Nations or
the Principles of Natural Law (Le droit des gens, ou principes
de la loi naturelle), trans. Charles G. Fenwick (1916),
Classics of International Law (3 vols., Buffalo, NY:
William S. Hein & Co., 1995)
xxvi
1
The renaissance of a cause of action
By what artifice might a state owe a duty to the world at large to maintain
an adequate system for the administration of justice? It is one thing for
states to assume obligations at their own diplomatic initiative. Few would
question that legal duties will flow from a treaty by which two states
promise each other that their nationals will be afforded a certain standard
of treatment if they are accused of crimes in the other country, or a
multilateral agreement by which each state promises all other signatories
to abide by certain rules for international trade and investment. But by
what contrivance is a state to be held responsible for an imperfect judicial
system? When did any state make promises to that effect?
The answer is that the duty to provide decent justice to foreigners
arises from customary international law. Indeed, it is one of its oldest
principles.1 From the Renaissance to the First World War – an international
lawyer might say from sometime before Grotius to sometime after Calvo –
claims of denial of justice were the staple of international legal disputes.
There is nothing surprising here. Like most institutions, the nation state did
not emerge full-blown and powerful, but inchoate and vulnerable. The
territorial integrity of a polity aspiring to statehood would not long remain
inviolate if it failed to warrant that it was not a zone of chaos and lawlessness.
So a paradox emerged; it was precisely in attempting to secure their
exclusive jurisdiction over internal legal processes that states accepted the
1
Having reviewed the conventions which proliferated in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, Judge Charles de Visscher (as he was to become) wrote in 1935 that the
‘numerous treaties which stipulate free and ready access to tribunals do no more than
confirm a principle the authority of which is independent of any convention’ (de
Visscher at p. 374; all translations of quotations from de Visscher are the present
author’s).
1
Denial of Justice in International Law
duty to maintain those processes at a minimum international standard.
The content of that standard has been a matter of controversy. For many
generations, the dominant Latin American view tended to be minimalist.
But whatever the debate as to its scope, the principle that a state violates
international law if it denies justice to aliens has been universally accepted
for centuries.
It is easier to have opinions about a foreigner’s claim of denial of justice
than to understand its legal foundation. The word ‘justice’ is often
emotive, and sometimes seems to paralyse reflection.2 Although it was
already then among the most venerable notions of unlawful state conduct,
Alwyn Freeman began his seminal monograph on the subject in 1938
with the observation that denial of justice was ‘one of the most poorly
elucidated concepts of international law’.3 He proceeded to give the
matter his own elucidation in 623 pages, demonstrating that the topic,
however poorly understood, was hardly bereft of material – whether
arbitral awards, diplomatic practice, or academic writings.4
In the course of the succeeding three generations, the scope for invoking the grievance of denial of justice has broadened immensely. There are
2
‘This striving towards justice is to all appearances one of man’s strongest emotions,
which is why reason has the greatest difficulty in controlling it’ (Vladimir Bukovsky,
Introduction, Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon (1940; trans. Daphne Hardy, London:
Folio Society, 1980)).
3
Freeman at p. 2.
4
No work of similar depth appears to have been published subsequently. In his Third
Report on Diplomatic Protection for the International Law Commission in 2002,
Professor John Dugard expressed his intention to write an addendum on denial of
justice, which he considered ‘as central to the study of the local remedies rule as is the
Prince of Denmark to Hamlet’. International Law Commission (Dugard), Third Report
on Diplomatic Protection, UN Doc. A/CN.4/523 (2002) at p. 4, para. 13. (The point is
obvious: if exhaustion of local remedies is required, a delinquent state must not be
allowed to shunt the grievance into oblivion. This aspect of the problem was perfectly
captured by the International Court of Justice in Case concerning the Barcelona Traction Light
and Power Co. Ltd (Belgium v. Spain) (Preliminary Objections), 1964 ICJ Reports 6, at p. 46:
‘[t]he objection of the Respondent that local remedies were not exhausted is met all
along the line by the Applicant’s contention that it was, inter alia, precisely in the attempt
to exhaust local remedies that the alleged denials of justice were suffered’.) The very
prospect of such an addendum, however, caused strong headwinds to build up within
the Commission, where voices were heard to the effect that the topic of denial of justice
appertains to the forbidden realm of so-called primary rules. It appears unlikely that the
announced addendum will see the light of day. The draft articles on diplomatic
protection studiously avoid any reference to denial of justice for the explicit reason
that they seek ‘to avoid any suggestion’ that they encompass ‘primary rule[s]’.
International Law Commission (Dugard), First Report on Diplomatic Protection,
UN Doc. A/CN.4/506 (2000) at p. 15, para. 40.
2
The renaissance of a cause of action
two fundamental explanations. First, it has become universally accepted
that national courts do not somehow stand apart from other institutions of
a state, but are its instrumentalities. They are as much a part of the state as
the executive or legislative branches, and their acts and omissions are
equally attributable to it. Secondly, and more recently, the incidence of
such complaints actually being raised has increased greatly with the
emergence of procedures under which victims may act directly, under
international law and before international jurisdictions, to seek redress.
These procedures have notably been established in human rights treaties,
and in treaties for the protection of investments.
Although direct access to the remedies of international law is a dramatic development generally, it is particularly so with respect to claims of
denial of justice. In Freeman’s day, it was a postulate that claims had to be
prosecuted by the victim’s state through the channel of diplomatic protection. But a government’s foreign relations involve complex and countervailing objectives. Ministries of foreign affairs are disinclined to expend
political capital pursuing the claims of individuals or corporations in the
single-minded manner indispensable to success in litigation.
The world has changed. Complainants may now pursue states directly.
They need not be inhibited by any deference to the fact that the wrong they
believed was done to them took the form of a court judgment. Moreover, the
number of states of whose conduct they might complain has tripled since
1938. They administer legal systems presenting vastly different degrees of
imperfection. Finally, the pace and scope of international exchanges, with
their inevitable share of disputes, have increased beyond recognition.
International lawyers therefore inevitably developed a renewed interest in
the delict of denial of justice. Although the words come easily to the lips, their
meaning is not necessarily fully formed in the mind. What kind of injustice,
precisely, is denial of justice? Who commits it? Who is responsible for it?
Who corrects it? When does the authority to effect such correction escape
the exclusive domain of national institutions? What indeed is the remedy?
If the contours of the ancient landscape surveyed by Freeman were
unclear, one should hardly be surprised that the more crowded and frenetic
realities of current practice call out even more insistently for the systematic
re-examination of a notion as open-textured as this one.
The most salient study in French, still valuable, is de Visscher. Of the numerous articles
written on the subject, Fitzmaurice’s gem-like study in 1932 captures the essence of the
topic.
3
Denial of Justice in International Law
At its most general, the international delict may be stated thus: a state
incurs responsibility if it administers justice to aliens in a fundamentally unfair manner.
The expression is not as nebulous as it may seem. Moreover the fact that
rules have open texture is not inconsistent with the presence of a core of
settled meaning which resolves most questions in a predictable manner.5
The words ‘administer justice’ convey something meaningful, as this
study will show, and so does the proviso that we are concerned with
violations of international, not national, law. True, the sentence assumes
rather than demonstrates the existence of international norms of ‘fundamental unfairness’. They require elaboration.
Denial of justice in international law cannot be equated with the notion
developed in most municipal systems, where it has the limited meaning of a
refusal to hear a grievance. Under national law, a disappointed litigant who
has been given full access to the procedures provided within the system –
including appeals and possibly mechanisms for revision for mistake, fraud,
suppressed evidence and the like – cannot ask for more justice, or different
justice. The matter is res judicata; the system has given all it has to offer.
International law provides standards by which national systems can
be judged from the outside. National courts are, without doubt, instrumentalities of the state, so the state may be judged for the acts or omissions of its
courts with respect to aliens. It could not be otherwise. Internationally, the
state is a single entity. The rule of law does not allow the very party whose
compliance is in question to determine whether it is a transgressor.6
To the extent that the decisions of national courts disregard or misapply
international law, they are subject to international censure like any other
organ of a state. But since courts are charged with the administration of
5
This sentence reproduces terms which some readers may recognise as recurrent in
H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law (2nd edn, Oxford University Press, 1994).
6
‘In the case of international law, an international court is the proper organ finally to
make the decision that a rule of international law has been broken. Municipal courts
may pronounce on the issue, but it is clear that for the international legal system this
cannot be final’ (C. F. Amerasinghe, State Responsibility for Injuries to Aliens (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1967), at p. 215).
The abundant arbitral jurisprudence of the nineteenth century is filled with statements
like this: ‘It is well settled that the decisions of a court, condemning the property of
citizens of another country, are not conclusive evidence of the justice or legality of such
condemnation’ (The Orient (US v. Mexico), Moore, Arbitrations 3229, at pp. 3229–30).
Umpire Lieber put it thus in the Garrison case: ‘It is true that it is a matter of the greatest
political and international delicacy for one country to disacknowledge the judicial
decisions of a court of another country, which nevertheless the law of nations universally
allows in extreme cases. It has done so from the times of Hugo Grotius’ (US v. Mexico, Moore,
Arbitrations at p. 3129 (emphasis added)).
4
The renaissance of a cause of action
justice, it is tempting to refer to their failure to respect international law as a
substantive denial of justice. This concept, however, is alien to most national
legal systems because they incorporate corrective mechanisms which yield a
final result deemed by definition to be right. In other words, denial of justice
under international law has been thought to encompass a dimension –
substantive denial of justice – mostly unknown in national law.
(Switzerland, we shall see, is an exception.) There is no need to perpetuate
such a confusing contrast between international and national notions. A
thesis of this study is that the category of substantive denial of justice may
now be jettisoned. When national courts misapply international law, they
commit substantive violations which should not be called denials of
justice; the state from which they are emanations incurs direct international responsibility for the violation without regard to the branch of
government which was involved. Since the acts or omissions of its courts
are attributable to the state, their transgressions of international law are
those of the state. Nothing is added by giving violations of international
law a special appellation only because they are effected by a judicial body.
To the extent that national courts disregard or misapply national law,
their errors do not generate international responsibility unless they have
misconducted themselves in some egregious manner which scholars have
often referred to as technical or procedural denial of justice. Although many
national laws recognise this type of denial of justice, municipal concepts
vary. Often they are exceedingly narrow; a judge’s refusal to hear a petition
may be severely sanctioned, but that is all. Once a judicial body takes up a
matter, violations of procedural codes may naturally be the subject of
appeals. This is daily fare for appellate courts, but such grievances have
no reason to refer to the concept of denial of justice; the fact that they are
being heard means that justice is not being denied. Under international
law, the general notion of denial of justice generates liability whenever an
uncorrected national judgment is vitiated by fundamental unfairness.
Thus it must be, as long as international law does not impose specific
supranational procedural rules in the guise of treaties.
Such fundamental instruments as the UN Universal Declaration on
Human Rights,7 the European Convention on Human Rights and the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights define basic
7
Article 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (‘The world’s first international bill of rights’, General Assembly Resolution A/RES/217A (III), adopted 10
December 1948) provides: ‘Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public
hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and
obligations and of any criminal charge against him.’
5
Denial of Justice in International Law
minimum standards and include norms which must be respected by any
judicial system aspiring to international legitimacy.8 To the extent
that such rules emerge, the expression ‘denial of justice’ may lose currency
as petitioners find it more convenient to invoke a breach of specific
provisions of the relevant treaty. If so, the general rubric of denial of
justice may be redundant in the light of the lex specialis, but its substantive
tenor is not invalidated.
Although the expression as such does not appear in these and similar
texts, the customary international law of denial of justice will continue to
influence the way in which international treaties are applied. In turn, the
application of treaty provisions will contribute to a modern understanding
of the old doctrine. The reason for this inevitable cross-pollination is that
the elements of the delict of denial of justice tend to reappear as treaty
provisions, for example when they proscribe ‘discrimination’ or when
they require ‘fair and equitable treatment’. Thus, a complainant before
an international tribunal may allege that a treaty has been breached by
reference to its terms without invoking the doctrine of denial of justice by
name. When the alleged breach has been committed by a judicial body,
however, an assessment of discrimination, or unfairness, or protection immediately invites reference to the way such general notions have been understood in the context of denial of justice.
An illustration is the Loewen case, undoubtedly one of the most important international decisions rendered in the field of denial of justice.9 The
complaint alleged breaches of the North American Free Trade
Agreement, a treaty which does not contain the expression ‘denial of
justice’ as such. Yet the entitlement to treatment ‘in accordance with
international law’ by virtue of Article 1105 of NAFTA encompasses
protection against denials of justice.
With respect to more concrete and specific provisions of modern
treaties, to the extent they represent a broad consensus they will inevitably
be seen as providing content to the general concepts of customary international law even in cases where such treaties do not apply.
8
See Aleksandar Jaksic, Arbitration and Human Rights (Peter Lang Publishing, Frankfurt
am Main, 2002); cf. in counterpoint Marius Emberland, ‘The Usefulness of Applying
Human Rights Arguments in International Commercial Arbitration’, (2003) 20 Journal
of International Arbitration 355. See generally chap. 4 (‘Human Rights Law Requirements
in International Arbitration’) of Georgios Petrochilos, Procedural Law in International
Arbitration (Oxford University Press, 2004), at pp. 109–165.
9
Loewen, 26 June 2003.
6
The renaissance of a cause of action
At any rate, greater clarity may be achieved by observing that denial of
justice is always procedural. The adjective is no longer needed.
State responsibility for denial of justice is justified, indeed required, in
order to satisfy the international requirement that states provide for the
effective protection of the rights of foreigners, whether those rights have
been acquired by operation of national law or imposed by overriding
international principles. A foreigner is always entitled to procedural fairness as measured by an international standard. That is the raison d’être of
the notion of denial of justice. The doctrine of denial of justice is not
required to protect substantive rights under international law, for the
simple reason that national courts do not have the last word with regard to
such rights; courts or tribunals entitled to apply international law will
simply correct the failure to observe the right in question. Substantive
rights under national law, on the other hand, are created by the state, and
are subject to the sovereign authority to legislate, and to interpret.
Therefore, the dismissal of a claim of right under national law by the
properly constituted national authority, whether correct or incorrect as a
matter of national law (as previously or subsequently understood), does
not give rise to an international delict unless there has been a violation of
due process as defined by international standards.
This study examines the bases on which international jurisdictions may
give effect to that essential exception.10 It will lead to three particularly
important insights.
First, we will discover that international fora have no reason to recognise a category of substantive denials of justice. In international law,
denial of justice is about due process, nothing else – and that is plenty.
Secondly, many definitions of denial of justice are misleading. The flaw
lies in their concentration on individual instances of miscarriage of justice,
using an infinite variety of adjectives to convey the egregiousness which
undoubtedly is required to conclude that the international delict has
indeed occurred. But international law does not impose a duty on states
to treat foreigners fairly at every step of the legal process. The duty is to
create and maintain a system of justice which ensures that unfairness to
foreigners either does not happen, or is corrected; ‘[ I ]t is the whole system of
10
The author should disclose that he was a member of the arbitral tribunals in Robert
Azinian, et al. v. Mexico, award, 1 November 1998, 5 ICSID Reports 269; Himpurna
California Energy Ltd v. PT. (Persero) Perusahaan Listruik Negara, award, 4 May 1999,
(2000) XXV Yearbook Commercial Arbitration 13; and Generation Ukraine Inc. v. Ukraine,
award, 16 September 2003, (2005) 44 ILM 404 which are discussed in various sections
of this book.
7
Denial of Justice in International Law
legal protection, as provided by municipal law, which must have been put
to the test.’11 It is the breach of that duty which constitutes denial of
justice. Exhaustion of local remedies in the context of denial of justice is
therefore not a matter of procedure or admissibility, but an inherent
material element of the delict.12 Many investment treaties contain a
waiver of the exhaustion requirement to the effect that a foreigner may
seize an international tribunal without first seeking to use reasonably
available national remedies. Such waivers may ensure the complainant
access to the international tribunal, yet a claim of denial of justice would
fail substantively in the absence of proof that the national system was
given a reasonably full chance to correct the unfairness in question.
(There is no paradox in the notion of the substance of a procedural duty; it is
simply the answer to the question: what is due process?)
Thirdly, claims of denial of justice cannot be decided without balancing
a number of complex considerations which tend to be specific to each
instance. Anyone who insists that international responsibility in this
regard may not arise unless it is the product of a perfectly predictable
application of objective criteria simply does not accept international
adjudication of denial of justice – and to be consistent would have to
maintain the same posture with respect to other fundamental matters
such as international determinations of ‘equitable’ delimitation or ‘proportional’ armed response.
A final introductory comment: current international jurisprudence
concerning denial of justice has found a particular expression in the
field of foreign investment, perhaps more notably so than in the law of
human rights. This may to some degree be the consequence of the fact
that investors tend to be better situated to mobilise the resources required
to prosecute high-stakes grievances in a sustained manner before international fora. But far more important is the relative paucity of access to
effective remedies in the field of human rights. True enough, the
European Convention on Human Rights offers the prospect of concrete
remedies to millions of Europeans, but practice under the corresponding
American and African instruments lags far behind, while the bulk of the
world’s population, in Asia, does not benefit from a regional human rights
11
12
Ambatielos Claim (Greece v. UK ), 6 March 1956, XII RIAA 83, at p. 120.
Accord, A. A. Cançado Trindade, ‘Denial of Justice and its Relationship to Exhaustion
of Local Remedies in International Law’, (1978) 53 Philippine Law Journal 404;
International Law Commission (Dugard), Second Report on Diplomatic Protection,
UN Doc. A/CN.4/514 (2001) at p. 6, para. 10.
8
The renaissance of a cause of action
convention at all. Moreover, as Professor Dugard wrote in his First
Report on Diplomatic Protection for the International Law Commission:
To suggest that universal human rights conventions, particularly the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, provide individuals with
effective remedies for the protection of their human rights is to engage in a
fantasy which, unlike fiction, has no place in legal reasoning. The sad truth is that
only a handful of individuals, in the limited number of States that accept the right
of individual petition to the monitoring bodies of these conventions, have
obtained or will obtain satisfactory remedies from these conventions.13
He went on to note that with respect to aliens, although universal and
human rights conventions in principle extend protection to all individuals
whether nationals or foreigners:
there is no multilateral convention that seeks to provide the alien with remedies
for the protection of her rights outside the field of foreign investment.14
Dugard was of course examining the expansion of direct access as it
relates to the ILC’s inquiry into diplomatic protection. To emphasise his
point, he observed that although the UN General Assembly in 1985
adopted the Declaration on the Human Rights of Individuals Who are
not Nationals of the Country in Which They Live,15 instead of proposing
any enforcement machinery that instrument simply reiterates the alien’s
right to seek diplomatic protection.
This starkly illustrates the current position: that aliens may have rights under
international law as human beings, but they have no remedies under international law – in the absence of a human rights treaty – except through the
intervention of their national State.16
Investment arbitrations, on the other hand, have proliferated under the
multitude of bilateral investment treaties now extant, and, as we shall see,
claimants in such cases have rediscovered the grievance of denial of justice
and pursued it with vigour.
13
ILC, First Report on Diplomatic Protection at p. 8, para. 25.
Ibid. at para. 26.
15
General Assembly Resolution A/RES/40/144, adopted 13 December 1985.
16
ILC, First Report on Diplomatic Protection at p. 9, para. 28.
14
9
2
The historical evolution of denial of justice *
Absence of a universal standard
Denial of justice is an elusive concept. Freeman called it that ‘innocentappearing phrase’, only to deplore the ‘chaotic heterogeneity’ of views as
to its proper scope. There are two readily apparent reasons why this
should be so.
The first is a matter of definition; all kinds of injustice could be referred
to as denial of justice, but then the expression could be invoked to
complain about the disposition of any grievance. It would thus lack any
particular meaning and lose all usefulness. The malleability of the words
* The first draft of this chapter was written in the little port of Gustavia, near the modest
museum of the island of St Barthelemy and its even more humble library. This
happenstance gave rise to one of those welcome diversions of historical research.
The town was named after King Gustav III of Sweden, who acquired St Barthelemy
in 1784. For the next century, the tiny Caribbean island became Sweden’s only
durable overseas dominion. The visiting author may perhaps be forgiven for having
distracted himself by wondering when the first Swedish national set foot on the
island. The true answer (Viktor von Stedingk, an officer of the merchant marine,
debarked in 1783) is uninteresting; more entertaining is a false trail, namely the recent
discovery that as early as 1633 four vessels with unmistakably Swedish names
(Stockholms Krona, Förgyllda Lejonet, Norrlandskeppet and Gefleskeppet) anchored overnight
off the site of what was to become Gustavia. They were part of a fleet embarked on a
successful although ephemeral venture to conquer the island of St Martin – visible ten
nautical miles away – but had initially, it seems, mistaken their target. More to the
point, there was not a single Swede on board; the four ships were flying the flag of
Spain, having been seized in San Lucar as reprisal for damage alleged to have been
caused to Spanish vessels in the Baltic port of Wismar in Mecklenburg during its
occupation by Swedish troops during the Thirty Years’ War. The failure of Sweden to
make reparations was thus, in Spain’s eyes, the denial of justice; the reprisal was the
remedy.
10
The historical evolution of denial of justice
denial of justice have led states to adopt narrower or broader definitions, as
their interests dictate.
The other reason is that some national laws contain their own longestablished doctrines of denial of justice, defined in a manner different
from that of international law, and sometimes inconsistent with it. These
concepts were grounded in the commoners’ historical right to demand
that local lords hear petitions. They have endured in the prohibition
against non liquet.1 The same requirements exist in international law,2
but the latter certainly requires more. National laws generally demand
nothing more than some kind of disposition of the plaint. Even a legally
unfounded judgment of inadmissibility is not deemed to constitute a
denial of justice, but would stand or fall depending on the availability of
other grounds of appeal. The severe sanctions against judges who commit
a denial of justice under national law3 are intuitively consistent with the
narrow definition of the delict and the utter rarity of its occurrence. The
important point is not that national laws tend to be more restrictive than
international law, but that they are varied – different from international
law, and differing among themselves. Already in his day, Freeman noted
that Switzerland had a uniquely expansive jurisprudence with respect to
denial of justice. As the Swiss Federal Tribunal put it in 1880, the concept
applied to any judicial or administrative act which ‘deprives a citizen of
any of the essential guarantees granted to him by law’.4
The Swiss example is instructive because it demonstrates the different
paths national systems may take. Its broad conception stemmed from
the interpretation given to the Swiss Federal Constitution of 1874,
Article 4(1) of which accords to all citizens ‘equality of treatment before
the law’. This notion was equated with an expansively defined prohibition of ‘denial of justice’, both ‘formal’ and substantive. Formal
(or procedural) denial of justice was interpreted to include a violation
of the right to obtain a ruling on a claim within a reasonable time; to be
judged by properly constituted and independent authorities at all levels,
1
See, e.g., Article 4 of the French Civil Code. A digest of national rules with respect to the
duty to judge irrespective of legislative lacunae appears in Bin Cheng, General Principles of
Law as Applied by International Tribunals (Cambridge: Grotius, 1953, repr. 1987), at
Appendix 2. See also Hersch Lauterpacht, The Function of Law in the International
Community (Oxford: Clarendon, 1933), at pp. 63–69.
2
The rule against declining to judge because of the silence or obscurity of the law has
been viewed as a ‘fundamental tenet of all legal systems’, Oppenheim, vol. I, p. 13, note 26.
3
Article 434–7–1 of the French Penal Code provides, in addition to a fine, for a
prohibition against holding public office from five to twenty years.
4
Quoted in Freeman at p. 93, note 3 (the present author’s translation).
11
Denial of Justice in International Law
irrespective of whether the irregularity had an effect on the decision; not
to have a claim rejected due to an inconsequential procedural error5
(dépourvue de gravité); to consult one’s court file and present evidence; to
obtain a reasoned decision; and even to obtain financial legal assistance.
Substantive denial of justice included not only a violation of the citizen’s
right to a correct and uniform interpretation of the law, but also the
emblematic right to a decision free of ‘arbitrariness’ – an expression
familiar even to occasional students of Swiss jurisprudence. To ensure
uniform application of the law, and hence the equal treatment of its
subjects, the Federal Tribunal verifies conformity with established precedents. Arbitrariness is not, moreover, limited to a failure to respect
settled law; rare though such findings may be, they may in principle
include judgments which are in ‘clear contradiction with the factual
circumstances’.6 And when the current Swiss Constitution was promulgated in 1999, it not only retained the original right to equal treatment
(in Article 8) but explicitly incorporated (in Article 9) its jurisprudential
offshoot, the prohibition of arbitrariness.
In sum, most national laws expressly refer to denial of justice as
something less than international law requires, whereas Swiss law has
for more than a century gone well beyond anything the international
community is yet in a position to prescribe. It is no wonder that nonspecialists would have different ideas of what the ‘innocent-appearing’
phrase means.
Of course other national laws also contain mechanisms to reverse
procedural or indeed substantive mistakes.7 In the common law, they
5
Andres Auer, Giagio Malinverni and Michel Hottelier, Droit Constitutionnel Suisse (2 vols.,
Bern: Staempfli Editions, 2000), vol. II, p. 605, at no. 1272. Swiss jurists employ the
phrase ‘interdiction de formalisme excessif ’. See Feuille Fédérale ( Journal Officiel) de la
Confédération Suisse (1997) at p. 183; Recueil officiel des Arrêts du Tribunal Fédéral 119 Ia 4,
at p. 6.
6
Auer, Malinverni and Hottelier, Droit Constitutionnel Suisse, vol. II, p. 534, at no. 1098.
7
French jurisprudence has developed an exceptional rule of jurisdiction to the effect that
the municipal courts will hear a complaint even in the absence of any territorial
connection with France if they find that no other legal system considers itself competent
to dispose of the matter. The purpose of the rule is expressed as that of avoiding denial of
justice; see Pierre Mayer, Droit international privé (6th edn, Paris: Montchrestien, 1998), at
p. 189. This is another singular use of the expression; it does not denote breach of a duty
on the part of any court or indeed legal order, but rather commands the French judge to
step in if no one else will. This notion developed in response to the historical refusal of
French courts to hear disputes between two foreigners; that raison d’être is no longer
extant, and denial of justice is today seldom used as a jurisdictional basis; Loı̈c Cadiet,
Droit judiciaire privé (3rd edn, Paris: Litec, 2000), p. 243; but see National Iranian Oil Co.
(NIOC) v. Israel, 2002 Revue de l’arbitrage 427.
12
The historical evolution of denial of justice
give effect to notions of natural justice, due process, or appeal for reversible error; in civil law systems, they are sanctioned by codes of procedure.
They are thus corrected by the legal system itself and are therefore by
definition not viewed as denials of justice. The fact that the Swiss consider
a wide range of erroneous lower-court decisions to constitute denials of
justice is merely a matter of nomenclature.8 But when international law
considers claims of denials of justice, it evaluates the relevant national
system from the outside and from above, in a way which that system by
definition cannot do itself.
Right and might in the law of nations
The origin of the international law of denial of justice may be traced to
the medieval rule of private reprisals which emerged when the centre
did not hold: when spent empires and kingdoms or principalities could
no longer impose their authority.9 On occasions when ordinary remedies therefore failed, reprisals by private individuals, typically
authorised by a letter of marque or warrant from their own sovereign,
could be justified as an extraordinary remedy for especially high degrees
of injustice: denegatio justitiae.10 Such a wrong would appear whenever
judgments were the result of prejudice in favour of one disputant, or
desire to please a local ruler – but not if the judgment were simply
mistaken. The right would not materialise until appeals had been
exhausted. Thereafter, as a number of treaties explicitly provided,
extreme measures would not be considered acts of war if justice could
not be secured by ordinary means. Justice delayed was recognised as
justice denied; the Anglo-Spanish Treaty of 1667, for example,
authorised reprisal after six months’ notice.11
8
In his oral argument on 5 June 1936 in Losinger Co. Case (Switzerland v. Yugoslavia),
Professor Georges Sauser-Hall, as Agent for Switzerland, developed the distinctions
between municipal and international notions of denial of justice. His point was that the
international concept was broader than national ones; he could hardly have argued
that the position in his own national law was representative; (1935) PCIJ, Series C,
No. 78, 7, at p. 313. The relevance of Sauser-Hall’s arguments – and indeed that of the
case as a whole – are discussed in Stephen M. Schwebel, International Arbitration: Three
Salient Problems (Cambridge: Grotius, 1987), at pp. 74–75.
9
Freeman, at p. 55, note 1, cites da Legano, Tractatus de Bello, de Repræsaliis et de Duello
(Oxford: Cargenie, 1360), which he found ‘apparently remained the most direct attack
on this problem for well over two hundred and fifty years’. Ibid. at p. 57, note 1.
10
The expression is echoed in its contemporary Spanish equivalent: denegación de justicia.
11
Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Great Britain and Spain, 13 May 1667
[1667–1668] Consolidated Treaty Series 63.
13
Denial of Justice in International Law
The objective of the reprisals was typically to compel the original
delinquent – who might be a private person – to make reparations since
the legal system had proved itself unwilling to do so. The definition of
reprisals preferred by de Visscher was this: ‘A right granted to a private
person by the sovereign authority of which he is a subject to repossess, in
times of peace, even by force, his goods or the equivalent thereof, from a
foreigner or fellow citizens of the latter, whenever he has not been able to
obtain justice by the judicial avenues of the country of his adversary.’12
Although de Visscher traced one such document back to 1489 (France/
Spain), most of the ‘long series of treaties’ limiting reprisals to instances of
denial of justice seem to have emerged in the 1600s.13
As states appeared in their modern form, they claimed full control of legal
processes (‘exclusive jurisdiction’) in their territory. With this control came
responsibility, including external responsibility for wrongs suffered by foreigners in their territory. The system of reprisals fell into disuse; the injured
alien did not need to seek private justice because the foreign state was bound
by the law of nations, and would be held to its international responsibility
at the initiative of the complainant’s own state, which, rather than issuing
letters of marque, could exercise the right of diplomatic protection.
Acceptance of international authority to control national dispensation
of justice was neither instant nor universal. To the contrary, many states
maintained that foreigners should not have any greater entitlement than
citizens to challenge the national system. Freeman put it this way:
The principle that foreigners must be content with the treatment which is
dispensed by the territorial authorities to nationals is based upon a general
presumption that the laws and their administration are satisfactory in the light of international
requirements.14
This passage confuses the problem, and in so doing understates it. For if a
general presumption of the type invoked by the author did not exist, it
surely would not have to be invented. Any party contending that a state’s
administration of justice is not ‘satisfactory in the light of international
requirements’ must prove it: actori incumbit probatio. To posit that this is the
result of a presumption is unnecessary and probably wrong. (If a state
acting as a claimant wished to demonstrate that it was entitled to the
recognition of some right, or absence of liability, as the result of a national
judicial decision, it would benefit from no presumption, but would have to
12
14
De Visscher at p. 371. 13 Ibid. at p. 372.
Freeman at p. 74 (emphasis in the original).
14
The historical evolution of denial of justice
demonstrate that the decision satisfied the international requirement
pertaining to the claimed right or to the disavowed responsibility.)
The problem was in fact more serious; some states simply refused to
recognise the very existence of ‘international requirements’ that could
trump national standards, and even more emphatically rejected the idea
that aliens might be entitled to different treatment from local citizens
(because they could claim diplomatic protection and thus trigger proceedings leading to international adjudication).
To understand the context of this reluctance to insist on national
treatment, which found its historical spokesman in the Argentinian
Carlos Calvo, one must be aware of another difficulty in the transition
from the regime of reprisals to that of diplomatic protection, namely the
draping of violent interventions in the raiments of international law.
Diplomatic protection typically involved a claim that a citizen of the
protecting state had been the victim of a denial of justice. If such claims
had simply been presented to international tribunals, the matter would not
have engendered such controversy and bitterness. The problem was that
the old methods of reprisals were revived in the form of gunboat diplomacy and the continued tendency of the powerful to view the right of
protection not as an entitlement to stand before an international tribunal,
but as a warrant for the use of unilateral force. The diplomatic component
of the expression ‘diplomatic protection’ was, in such circumstances, an
ironic but hardly subtle fiction.
The apogee of gunboat diplomacy was not reached off the shores of
a Latin American port, but rather in Piraeus in 1850, when Lord
Palmerston – then Foreign Secretary, five years before becoming
Prime Minister – sent the British fleet to seize all ships in the harbour
in retribution for the failure of the Greek Government to acknowledge
the legal claim of a British subject whose house had been burned down
by an anti-Semitic mob angered by the prohibition of the burning
in effigy of Judas Iscariot at Easter. This matter became known as the
Don Pacifico affair, not from the name of a ship but because the victim
David Ricardo, born in Gibraltar, was commonly known under this
appellation.
For reasons of diplomatic history of no interest here, Palmerston’s
actions involved a risk of war with France, and the House of Lords
censured his foreign policy. A Palmerston ally in the House of
Commons moved a contrary resolution in his support. This gave
Palmerston the occasion to give his ‘Civis Romanus Sum’ oration, which
in turn engendered a doctrine of the same name. Here is the nub of it:
15
Denial of Justice in International Law
As the Roman, in days of old, held himself free from indignity when he could say
‘Civis Romanus Sum’ [I am a Roman citizen], so also a British subject in
whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the
strong arm of England will protect him against injustice and wrong.
Palmerston went on to spell out the ramifications:
If our subjects abroad have complaints against individuals, or against the government of a foreign country, if the courts of law of that country can afford them
redress, then, no doubt, to those courts of justice the British subject ought in the
first instance to apply; and it is only on a denial of justice, or upon decisions
manifestly unjust, that the British Government should be called upon to interfere.
I say, then, that our doctrine is, that, in the first instance, redress should be
sought from the law courts of the country; but that in cases where redress can not
be so had – and those cases are many – to confine a British subject to that remedy
only, would be to deprive him of the protection which he is entitled to receive.
We shall be told, perhaps, as we have already been told, that if the people of
the country are liable to have heavy stones placed upon their breasts, and police
officers to dance upon them; if they are liable to have their heads tied to their
knees, and to be left for hours in that state; or to be swung like a pendulum, and to
be bastinadoed as they swing, foreigners have no right to be better treated than
the natives, and have no business to complain if the same things are practiced
upon them. We may be told this, but that is not my opinion, nor do I believe it is
the opinion of any reasonable man.15
Palmerston’s rhetoric was effective. The House voted its confidence in his
policy; and he went on to become a symbol of British nationalism. Robert
Lord Cecil was later to be quoted as reflecting: ‘I am aware that, whatever
folly or madness an English government may commit, the appeal to the
Civis Romanus doctrine is rarely without its effect upon an English
audience.’16
Palmerston argued that Britain had assisted in securing Greece’s independence from Turkey in 1832 on the condition that it become a constitutional monarchy; that when Prince Otho of Bavaria came of age and
ascended to the Greek throne his advisers preferred to maintain a ‘despotic’ rule under which judges ‘were at the mercy of the advisers of the
Crown’ and ‘brigandage’ was tolerated and indeed rewarded; that Greek
soldiers stationed ‘within a few minutes’ walk’ of Don Pacifico’s house
15
Parl. Deb., vol. 62, ser. 3, cols. 380–444, 25 June 1850, quoted in E. Root ‘The Basis of
Protection to Citizens Residing Abroad’ (1910) 4 AJIL 517, at p. 522.
16
Quoted in Joseph H. Park, British Prime Ministers of the Nineteenth Century: Policies and
Speeches (New York University Press, 1916), at p. 153.
16
The historical evolution of denial of justice
refused to afford protection; that the Greek police refused to search the
residences of important people where his stolen jewels might be found;
and that the Greek Government dismissed the claim out of hand. Of those
who criticised him for employing ‘so large a force against so small a
Power’, he asked rhetorically: ‘Is it to be held that if your subjects suffer
violence, outrage, plunder in a country which is weak and small, you
are to tell them when they apply for redress, that the country is so weak
and small that one cannot ask it for compensation?’ Should the British
government say, ‘we cannot give you redress because we have such ample
and easy ways of procuring it?’
The Don Pacifico affair was only the most notorious of instances where
powerful states took it up on themselves to be judge and party when
espousing the claims of the real or ostensible victim. As Edwin Borchard
was to write in his influential treatise in 1916, The Diplomatic Protection of
Citizens Abroad, the judgment by one government of the legality of the
conduct of another was:
the primary condition for the all too frequent abuse, by strong states, of the rights
of weaker countries.17
In due course, the twentieth century brought about a consecration of
the principle that international conflicts may not be resolved by force, or
‘intervention’ as the term was used in international law.18 (The immensity
of the suffering of multitudes of civilians during that bloody century
doubtless explains the urgent recognition of the norm, so tragically
honoured in the breach.) At an intermediate stage, the Drago Doctrine –
conceived in the aftermath of the German, British and Italian intervention in Venezuela in 1902–3 – sought to establish the principle that the
public debt of a state could never justify armed intervention – provided
that the borrowing state accepted international arbitration.19 Today, the
issue is one of adjudication, not force. But achieving a proper balance
17
Edwin Borchard, The Diplomatic Protection of Citizens Abroad (New York: The Banks Law
Publishing Co., 1916), at p. 331.
18
The authorities are innumerable. See notably Article 8 of the Montevideo Convention
on the Rights and Duties of States, Montevideo, 26 December 1933, in force 26
December 1934; Article 3 of the International Law Commission’s Draft Declaration
on Rights and Duties of States, UN Doc. A/1251 [1949] Yearbook of International
Law Commission 287 (‘Every State has the duty to refrain from intervening in the
internal or external affairs of any other State’).
19
Louis Drago, then the Argentinian Minister of Foreign Affairs, wrote his celebrated
note on 29 December 1902 on the occasion of the joint intervention of Great Britain,
Italy and Germany against Venezuela. He published a monograph entitled Cobro
17
Denial of Justice in International Law
between external norms and internal freedom to act is still far from
complete. It has not been an easy process.
Objections of weak states
The Don Pacifico affair offers instructive parallels in the dominant industrialised countries’ attitude toward Latin America. New states there were
assisted by Washington and London as they emerged from colonial
domination, but their new protectors – having acted on complex motivations ranging from pure geopolitics to commercial opportunity to idealist solidarity with the oppressed – seemed to consider themselves
entitled to impose their own ideas of discipline when the fledgling
national structures failed to ensure respect for the persons and property
of aliens.
So, for example, the Colombian port of Cartagena came to be targeted
for subjugation in 1857, just a few years after Palmerston had dispatched
the British fleet to Piraeus. The antecedents of the affair involved a vast
sale of arms by an influential merchant named James Mackintosh. An
early and ardent advocate of recognition of the new states of Latin
America, he had addressed the House of Commons in June 1824 in the
following terms:
When Great Britain, I hope soon, recognises the states of Spanish America, it will
not be a concession to them, because they do not need such recognition; it will be
for the own interest of England, to protect commerce and shipping of its subjects,
to achieve the best methods of cultivating friendly relations with important
countries, and settle, through negotiations, differences that otherwise might
end in war.20
Mackintosh’s enthusiasm for such recognition was fully understandable. In February 1821, he had signed a contract in London with Luis
López, a representative of the newly independent Gran Colombia, for the
provision of ships, arms and uniforms for 10,000 men. The price was
£186,000, paid for by Gran Colombia in government bonds issued with a
coercitivo de deudas publicas in 1906; his argument is most accessible in English in ‘State
Loans and their Relation to International Policy’, (1907) 1 AJIL 692. The Drago
Doctrine was reflected in the Porter Convention of 1907; see A. S. Hersley, ‘The Calvo
and Drago Doctrines’, (1907) 1 AJIL 26. See also G. W. Scott, ‘Hague Convention
Restricting the Use of Force to Recover Contract Claims’, (1908) 2 AJIL 78; Borchard,
The Diplomatic Protection of Citizens Abroad, at p. 308 ss.
20
Quoted in Klaus Gallo, De la invasión al reconocimiento – Gran Bretaña y el Rı́o de la Plata
1806–1826 (Buenos Aires: A–Z Editores, 1994), at p. 222.
18
The historical evolution of denial of justice
face value of £310,000. The material arrived on time in Cartagena de
Indias in April 1822. However, Vice President Santander initially refused
delivery in light of the excessive cost. After a debate concerning a renegotiation of the price, none other than Simón Bolı́var acknowledged the
contract.21
The bonds were not repaid. A Colombian minister, Manuel José
Hurtado, was sent to London to renegotiate the debt. Attempts to settle
amicably failed. Hence the thought that a debt owed by a state recognised
by the British Government would be a better credit risk might have
crossed Mackintosh’s mind when he made his eager speech to the
British Parliament.
In 1830, Gran Colombia disintegrated into the states of Nueva
Granada (Colombia), Venezuela and Ecuador. Repayment became
even more problematic. After many years of renegotiation and failed
settlements, British patience ran out. In sharp contrast to the peaceful
settlement of disputes prophesied by Mackintosh in 1824, the British
Government dispatched a squadron of five warships to Cartagena to
pursue his claims. On their arrival at daybreak on 23 April 1857,
British Vice Admiral Houston Stewart sent an ultimatum to the
Governor, Narciso Jimenéz, to pay the outstanding debt or risk bombardment. By an irony of fate, before the deadline expired, tropical disease
broke out on the ships and Stewart had to seek the permission of the city
authorities to bury the dead in the city cemetery. The magnanimity of the
local population in caring for the sick caused him to seek a revocation of
the order to bombard which, doubtless in the English spirit of ‘fair play’,
was granted.22
It has often been observed in international relations, and elsewhere,
that the weak seek the protection of the law, while the strong do not need
to be punctilious about its observance. As Solon was remembered to have
said, in a dark moment:
21
The case has many parallels with Jacob Idler v. Venezuela, Moore, Arbitrations at p. 3491,
discussed at considerable length in the section entitled ‘Governmental interference’, in
Chapter 6.
22
I am indebted to Nigel Blackaby for providing me with details of this episode, which is
described in Eduardo Lemaı̂tre, A Brief History of Cartagena (Bogotá: Editorial Colina,
1994). This is, broadly speaking, a Colombian version of the events. The story may be
told in other ways. But in historical terms, to understand the impulses of Latin
American lawyers, perception trumps the facts. Perception is the most important of
all realities (even on the premise, much debated in philosophy, that there is any other
reality).
19
Denial of Justice in International Law
Laws are spiders’ webs:
If some poor creature comes up against them, it is caught;
but a bigger one can break through and get away.23
Experience with the delict of denial of justice in the nineteenth century
was so closely associated with unilateral force that it was viewed by the
weak as a menace to be resisted. How could it be pretended that a
sanction was legitimised by international law in the absence of mutually
acceptable, neutral international adjudication?
The Calvo Doctrine and Clause
Carlos Calvo would have been well aware of the Mackintosh incident. In
1857, he was vice-consul of Argentina in Montevideo at the beginning of
an illustrious diplomatic and legal career. Eleven years later, his Derecho
internacional teórico y práctico, an intellectual assault on gunboat diplomacy,
set out a theory of international law which would enter the collective
psyche of Latin American and leave its mark well into the late twentieth
century. The theory was founded on a basic premise: foreigners who
invested in a state (or contracted a debt with a state) should have the same
rights to protection as nationals of that state and cannot claim broader
protection. If they have suffered a loss, they may only complain to the
courts of the host state. As long as the national courts are accessible to
them, foreigners have no international recourse. Thus disputes arising
from the presence of foreigners are removed from the realm of diplomatic
23
A sustained modern expression is found in the book-length essay of a former US State
Department official, Robert Kagan, Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New
World Order (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003). The author writes at pp. 10–11 that
the founders of the US ‘knew from their reading of Vattel that in international law,
‘‘strength or weakness . . . counts for nothing. A dwarf is as much a man as a giant is; a
small Republic is no less a sovereign State than the most powerful Kingdom’’ [quoting
from Gerald Stourzh, Alexander Hamilton and the Idea of Republican Government]’ (Stanford
University Press, 1970, at p. 134). Later generations of Americans, possessed of a great
deal more power and influence on the world stage, would not always be as enamoured
of this constraining egalitarian quality of international law. In the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries, it was the great European powers that did not always want
to be constrained . . . When the United States was weak, it practiced the strategies of
indirection, the strategies of weakness; now that the United Sates is powerful, it
behaves as powerful nations do. When the European great powers were strong,
they believed in strength and martial glory. Now they see the world through the
eyes of weaker powers. These very different points of view have naturally
produced . . . differing perspectives on the value and meaning of international law
and international institutions.’
20
The historical evolution of denial of justice
protection which on spectacular occasions, as seen, had been exercised in
an abusive manner.
Calvo’s theory was soon tested. In 1873, a note from the Mexican
Minister of Foreign Affairs to the US ambassador affirmed by reference to
Calvo’s writings that Mexico was not responsible for the harm caused to
foreigners during the civil war. The ambassador responded that Dr Calvo
was a young lawyer whose theories had not been accepted internationally.
This was the first of many rejections of the theory by the United States.
As capital importers, the Latin American states saw the Calvo Doctrine
as a means of safeguarding national sovereignty. It removed the unilateral
right of the investor’s state to interfere militarily or politically on behalf of
the investor. If the doctrine had been applied in the Mackintosh contract
through the inclusion of the so-called Calvo Clause, the creditor would
have had a right of redress only before the Colombian courts for repayment of his debt.
More formal recognition of the Calvo Doctrine came on the occasion
of the First International Conference of American States held in
Washington in 1889–90, when the ad hoc commission for international
law recommended adoption of the following propositions ‘as principles of
American international law:
(1) Foreigners are entitled to enjoy all the civil rights enjoyed by natives;
and they shall be accorded all the benefits of said rights in all that is
essential as well as in the form or procedure, and the legal remedies
incident thereto, absolutely in like manner as said natives.
(2) A nation has not, nor recognizes in favor to foreigners, any other
obligations or responsibilities than those which in favor of the natives
are established in like cases by the constitution and the laws.’24
This recommendation was unanimously adopted by the participating
Latin American states, with the exception of Haiti.
Taken in its historical and political context, the Calvo Doctrine was an
understandable attempt to rid the newly independent states of the trauma
of foreign intervention. Latin American states were sometimes able to
convince their European partners of its utility. For example, Article 21 of
the Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation between Italy and
Colombia of 1892 states:
24
Adopted on 18 April 1890, quoted in Freeman at p. 714.
21
Denial of Justice in International Law
Both Contracting Parties wish to avoid disputes which could affect their friendly
relationship and agree that in connection with disputes involving private parties
arising out of criminal, civil or administrative matters, their diplomatic agents
will abstain from intervention, save in case of denial of justice or extraordinary or
unlawful delay in the administration of justice.25
Latin American governments faced with military or diplomatic action
invoked the doctrine frequently. In its most rigid form, the Calvo
Doctrine polarised the positions of the United States and Europe, on
the one hand, and Latin America on the other. The ‘old continent’ and
the North Americans did not believe that local courts would dispense
justice to foreigners, and so rejected the Calvo Doctrine as a whole.
Indeed, the Calvo Doctrine replaced one form of unilateralism with
another. Insofar as it remained doctrina hispanoamericana rather than doctrina
universal it never became part of customary international law. In order to
reach a workable compromise, movement was needed on both sides.
Neutral ground was discovered at the Second International Peace
Conference, held in The Hague in 1907, when the Convention for the
Peaceful Resolution of International Disputes26 was prepared. The Latin
American states en masse signed the Convention, which promoted the
institution of compulsory bilateral arbitration treaties. Under these treaties, in the event of a dispute between two states arising out of a private
investor’s interests, the matter would be resolved neither by gunboats nor
local courts, but by an independent arbitral tribunal.
Strict adherence to the Calvo Doctrine was understandable when international law offered no options other than local courts or foreign warships.
But the 1907 Convention created a new tool to ensure equality between
states at the moment of dispute resolution, notwithstanding vast differences
in economic or military power. Examples of early bilateral treaties include
the Honduras–Italy Treaty of 1913, which provided for state-to-state
arbitration of disputes arising from ‘unlawful acts or omissions’ of either
state or its public authorities that caused financial loss to the nationals of the
other state.27 Pursuant to the Treaty, in the event of such a dispute,
Honduras and Italy would sign a special agreement setting out the procedure for the resulting arbitration. If such an agreement were not signed, the
arbitration would be conducted by a tribunal appointed by the Permanent
Court of Arbitration in The Hague, in accordance with the rules set out in
25
The exception of denial of justice is characteristic; see Note 30 of this chapter below.
[1898–1899] Consolidated Treaty Series 410.
27
Trattati Convenzioni vol. XXII at p. 391.
26
22
The historical evolution of denial of justice
the Convention for the Peaceful Settlement of International Disputes of
1899 and the resolutions of The Hague Conference of 1899.
Inter-state arbitration as envisaged by the Italy–Honduras Treaty was
clearly an encroachment upon the Calvo Doctrine, since it enabled an
aggrieved foreign investor to seek the espousal by its home state of a claim
which could then be resolved before an international tribunal. Yet it was
also an affirmation of one of the underlying principles of the doctrine:
equality between foreign and local citizens. The theme was taken up
again in the well-known mixed claims commissions constituted to deal
with alleged expropriations, notably in Venezuela and Mexico.28
The emergence of such tribunals should not be taken as evidence of
harmony and understanding. Latin Americans still resented the fact that
agreements to such adjudication were negotiated out of what was for
them a position of weakness, and were offended by the eagerness and
presumptuousness with which some claimants were obtaining redress for
what the local governments simply were not, with the best will in the world,
able to ensure for their own citizens. Not all representatives of the industrialised nations displayed the even-handedness of the US Secretary of State
Elihu Root, who in a remarkable address to the American Society of
International Law in 1910 – two years before winning the Nobel Peace
Prize – said the following:
Citizens abroad are too apt to complain that justice has been denied them
whenever they are beaten in a litigation, forgetting that, as a rule, they would
complain just the same if they were beaten in a litigation in the courts of their
own country. When a man goes into a foreign country to reside or to trade he
submits himself, his rights, and interests to the jurisdiction of the courts of that
country. He will naturally be at a disadvantage in litigation against citizens of the
country. He is less familiar than they with the laws, the ways of doing business,
the habits of thought and action, the method of procedure, the local customs and
prejudices, and often with the language in which the business is done and the
proceedings carried on. It is not the duty of a foreign country in which such a
litigant finds himself to make up to him for these disadvantages under which he
labors. They are disadvantages inseparable from his prosecuting his business in a
strange land. A large part of the dissatisfaction which aliens feel and express
regarding their treatment by foreign tribunals results from these causes, which
furnish no just ground for international complaint. It is very desirable that people
who go into other countries shall realize that they are not entitled to have the laws
and police regulations and methods of judicial procedure and customs of
28
The literature is abundant, and the awards numerous. A valuable bibliography
appears in Freeman at pp. 727–745.
23
Denial of Justice in International Law
business made over to suit them, or to have any other or different treatment than
that which is accorded to the citizens of the country into which they have gone; so
long as the government of that country maintains, according to its own ideas and
for the benefit of its own citizens, a system of law and administration which does
not violate the common standard of justice that is a part of international law.29
The impulse to limit the scope of denial of justice
Since they perceived the rule as too readily traduced into a hypocritical
cover for gunboat diplomacy, Latin American jurists came to take the
narrowest possible view of the scope of denial of justice (without denying
that it was a delict30). At the same time, they took the broadest possible
view of exhaustion of local remedies as a precondition of the exercise of
diplomatic protection. The great debates in the 1960s and 1970s about
so-called permanent sovereignty over natural resources suggest that this
deeply sceptical attitude was transmitted to the large number of new and
insecure states that achieved their independence in the two decades
following the Second World War.31
These political apprehensions, often emotional, led to the perpetuation
of a dialogue of the deaf which endured for at least a hundred years. On
the one hand jurists from weaker countries legitimately recoiled from the
perceived threat of force under the fig-leaf of the law of nations. Unable to
affect the realities of power, they attacked the fig-leaf. On the other hand,
29
Elihu Root, ‘The Basis of Protection of Citizens Abroad’, (1910) 4 AJIL 517, at
pp. 526–527.
30
In particular, Carlos Calvo himself, as we shall see, accepted this principle. So did his
successors; see e.g., J. Irizarry y Puente, ‘The Concept of ‘‘Denial of Justice’’ in Latin
America’, (1944) 43 Michigan Law Review 383, at p. 390 (aliens should not be allowed to,
‘except in the event of denial of justice, [invoke diplomatic protection] against a definitive
judgment of the courts’ emphasis added) and, to identical effect, Clovis Bevilaqua,
Direito publico internacional – A synthese dos principios e a contribuiçao do Brazil (Rio de Janeiro:
Livraria Francisco Alves, 1910), vol. I, at p. 198. Indeed, when the Second International
Conference of American States adopted the Convention relative to the Rights of Aliens in
Mexico City in 1902, its general rule of national treatment explicitly reserved an exception for international claims in the case of ‘manifest denial of justice, or unusual delay, or
evident violation of the principles of international law.’ Quoted in International Law
Commission (Dugard), The Addendum to the Third Report on Diplomatic Protection,
UN Doc. A/CN.4/523/Add.1 (2002) at p. 4, para. 8.
31
Commenting on provisions relating to expropriation in the so-called UN Charter of
Economic Rights and Duties of States, General Assembly Resolution, adopted 12
December 1974 (UN Doc. A/RES/3281 (XXIX)), William D. Rogers described them
as ‘a classic restatement of Calvo’, in ‘Of Missionaries, Fanatics and Lawyers: Some
Thoughts on Investment Disputes in the Americas’, (1978) 72 AJIL 1, at p. 5.
24
The historical evolution of denial of justice
jurists fervently seeking the propagation of the rule of law found it
inconceivable that any serious scholar would insist that a state, as a subject
of international law, could be the judge of the legality of its own conduct.
The frustrations of this dialogue were such that writers who ordinarily
expressed themselves in measured tones were unable to resist the temptation of venting their frustration on paper. One lightning-rod was the
much-debated Guerrero Report32 and its suggestions that a decision
not to hear a foreigner’s petition could not be a denial of justice because
of ‘the very fact that the local tribunal has been able to give a decision
regarding this request’ and that it was ‘inadmissible’ – contrary to the
overwhelming weight of doctrine – to consider that delays may constitute
a denial of justice. Reflecting on the implications, Freeman yielded to a
polemical impulse (uncharacteristically, it must be said) in the following
lines:
The possibility of a re-hearing before an international tribunal filled Guerrero
with a terrible foreboding and he shrank from this threatened violation of
internal sovereignty as from an incurable disease.33
Thus ships passed in the night, some piloted by those who could not
understand how the rule of international law could be compatible with
pure self-assessment, others by those who felt impelled to protect their
fragile sovereignty. For the latter, one surmises, the debate was not one of
principle but of control over its application. They did not in reality have a quarrel
with the principle of state responsibility, but a profound distrust for the
way it was given effect, whether by overmuscular ‘diplomatic’ protection
or by international adjudicators whom they felt were imposed upon them.
Such concerns justified particular insistence on the neutrality of the
mechanism for international adjudication. They did not justify the deconstruction of international law. Unfortunately the Latin American voice
acquired a reputation for seeking the latter, culminating in the Guerrero
Report. That document was characterised by the following conclusion,
wholly indefensible from the standpoint of positive law and dominant
doctrine:
32
Annexed to questionnaire No. 4 as adopted in 1926 by the Committee of Experts for
the Progressive Codification of International Law established by the Assembly of the
League of Nations in 1924, League of Nations Document C.196.M.70.1927.V; reproduced in Freeman, Appendix II, at pp. 629–633. The rapporteur, Gustavo Guerrero,
was a national of El Salvador.
33
Freeman at p. 121.
25
Denial of Justice in International Law
a judicial decision, whatever it may be, and even if vitiated by error or injustice,
does not involve the international responsibility of the State.34
This proposal was naturally condemned by Freeman, in these terms:
Under this statement of the law, the rendering of any decision, regardless of its
character, and although it be convincingly demonstrated that the decision was
actuated by gross bias or was the result of fraud or bribery, suffices to refute the
possibility of a denial of justice.35
And again:
Guerrero’s view – which typifies the Latin-American attitude – emasculates the
rule by which States are responsible for conduct of their judicial organs running
counter to international obligations governing the protection of aliens, since it
limits denial of justice (and therefore the right of foreign States to intervene
diplomatically), to cases which are almost unheard of in the practice of modern
States during time of peace. The principle that aliens must be admitted to
appropriate judicial recourse for the protection of their rights is one of general
international law, quite apart from the common stipulation of numerous treaties
that ‘nationals of the High Contracting Parties shall have free and unhindered
access to the courts and may sue or be sued on the same conditions as nationals of
the country.’ Consequently, since foreigners almost everywhere have access to
courts which render decisions of some kind or another, the effect of the procedural formula is to render the whole notion of denial of justice meaningless.36
Modern political realities
Ministries of Justice are often the poor cousins of government. Many
regimes place higher value on their own physical security – internal or
external – than on the legal security of their citizens. Ministries of the
Interior and Defence stand first in line when budgets are settled. Nor do
ordinary citizens necessarily insist that their governments give high priority to providing the material conditions of the best possible administration
of justice; for them, health, employment and education are constant
concerns, but many go through life without a single day in court. Hence
the immediacy of the demands on the Ministries of Public Health, of
Labour, or of Education.
Yet investment in justice is not a luxury. Without the rule of law, how
can access to health, education, or indeed any form of meaningful
34
35
Paragraph 6(b) of the Report, quoted in Freeman at p. 122.
Freeman at p. 122 (emphasis in the original). 36 Ibid. at p. 123.
26
The historical evolution of denial of justice
opportunity be properly regulated? How is it possible to achieve economic development, which does not occur without some confidence in
stable expectations?
It takes political maturity to act on such insights. The facts, however,
are plain to see. Poor countries may have powerful presidents and generals, but they seldom have powerful judges. In poor countries, judges
tend to have far less social status than the leading lawyers who appear
before them. The best and the brightest of graduates are not attracted to a
career on the bench. The quality of justice suffers; so does the general
perception of it; and a vicious cycle works its insidious way into collective
cynicism and despair.
Here and there, idealistic attempts have been made to ensure that
justice is not starved into submission. There have even been constitutional
proclamations that the Justice budget cannot be decreased beneath a
certain proportion of governmental expenditures. But such noble sentiments are all too often simply ignored, or turn out to be vulnerable to
manipulative accounting and other familiar subversions. A decent legal
culture, like any other aspect of culture, cannot be decreed into existence.
It may thus be a source of considerable frustration for a society which
finds it impossible to achieve honest and transparent justice from its own
courts to be told that the treatment to which foreigners claim to be
entitled under international law is superior to that given to local citizens.
The great difficulty is to understand that international adjudication is
not foreign adjudication. The citizens of a given country have no stake in
foreign justice; they did not create it, and whatever they may think of its
qualities in the abstract it has no legitimate basis on which to judge them
(unless they venture abroad). Therefore, as long as international justice is
thought of as foreign justice, it will be resisted. The key is the perception of
inclusiveness; when ‘we’ are part of the processes of international law,
consulted in its formation and benefiting from its protections and remedies, it becomes ‘our’ law too. The process by which their law (meaning the
province of an indifferent and perhaps hostile outside world) becomes our
law is extraordinarily complex. The movement is gradual, and not necessarily constant. Different groups of citizens, at different times, have
sharply varied perceptions. Is there a tipping point? If so, how might it
best be attained? These are daunting questions.
Nevertheless, an important movement has been building momentum
in Latin America, the region best known for its suspicion of international
adjudication. In the course of the past two decades, Latin American states
have ratified many bilateral treaties for the promotion and protection of
27
Denial of Justice in International Law
investment (BITs), and have reversed their initial scepticism with respect
to the ICSID Convention of 1965. They were quicker to adhere to the
Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), which also refers to
international arbitration.37 All of these instruments are avatars of the
bilateral arbitration treaties that grew out of the 1907 Peace Conference.
The most significant feature of BITs is that they give foreign investors the
right to initiate international arbitration against the host state to seek a
remedy for breaches of the treaty, without requiring any intervention of
their own government. Some 300 such treaties involving the region were
extant in 2003, more than twice the number four years earlier. Many
investors have tested the mechanisms; Latin American states accounted
for over 50 per cent of the cases pending the same year before the
International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, the
World Bank institution which administers many of these claims.
In addition to BITs, aggrieved parties may be in a position to avail
themselves of the options available under the multilateral treaties of the
trading regions, such as NAFTA and Mercosur (Brazil, Argentina,
Paraguay and Uruguay), which contain similar provisions for intraregional investment disputes (see NAFTA Chapter 11 and the 1994
Colonia and Buenos Aires protocols for Mercosur). These recall the
principles once envisaged at the 1907 Peace Conference, providing a
readily accessible neutral forum for the resolution of investment disputes
that respects the equality of the parties. By placing arbitration firmly in
the hands of the investor, and not the state, they have also effectively
depoliticised the remedy. This, as Ibrahim Shihata once wrote, is a
principal advantage of providing direct private access to an international forum.38
Notwithstanding the practical erosion of the Calvo Doctrine throughout the course of the twentieth century, it has retained a mythical status
among public lawyers in Latin America who enshrined it in the constitutions of their states. From Guatemala to Peru and from El Salvador to
Bolivia, the Calvo Clause has held a place in the magna carta. The developments described above have led to the need to confront the principle of
the superior status of international law over domestic law. From its
inception, the debate has contained a seed of ambiguity in that, as
37
See C. K. Dalrymple, ‘Politics and Foreign Direct Investment: The Multilateral
Investment Guarantee Agency and the Calvo Clause’, (1996) 29 Cornell International
Law Journal 161.
38
Ibrahim Shihata, ‘Towards a Greater Depolitization of Investment Disputes: The
Roles of ICSID and MIGA’, (1986) 1 ICSID Review 1.
28
The historical evolution of denial of justice
Calvo himself readily conceded, foreign complaints were admissible if a
state does not at least grant access to its courts. That concession immediately opens the door to question the quality of that access; it is difficult to
accept that any obligation would be satisfied by a pretence of form. Hence,
for example, when the Honduran Constitution of 1982 declares that aliens
are entitled to diplomatic protection only in cases of denial of justice,39 we
find ourselves again contemplating the Guerrero–Freeman divide and the
utter unlikelihood that any international adjudicator would accept that the
former’s extreme minimalism reflects international law.
All in all, nearly a century after his death, Calvo’s residual legacy in
Latin America appears limited. Throughout the region, states have
recognised the need to evolve and provide protections for foreign
investors as one of the enticements to invest. Once democracy had
re-established itself as the norm by the beginning of the 1990s,
many countries adopted economic models which included liberal access
for foreign investment. In order to attract that investment, the region
needed to provide a secure legal framework. A strict approach to the
Calvo Doctrine would have been sharply dissuasive.
One should consider that the mischief Calvo sought to combat was the
de facto perpetuation of the medieval regime of reprisals, with its unilateralist feature of a state being a judge in its own cause, seeking remedies at
the mouth of a cannon. The underlying principle of the Calvo Doctrine
was to prevent such inequity by insisting on equality between the domestic party and the foreigner, the home state of the investor and the host
state of the investment. So if he were with us today, Calvo might justifiably
point out that his doctrine supported rather than poisoned the fundamental tenet of international arbitration: his purpose was equal arms, not
the pursuit of xenophobia.
Much credit for defusing the tensions surrounding the Calvo Doctrine
should be given to the remarkable decision of the Mexico–United States
General Claims Commission, under its President Cornelis Van
Vollenhoven, in the 1926 case of North American Dredging Company of Texas
(US v. Mexico).40 The claim was for the recovery of nearly a quarter of a
39
What is true for this reflection of the Calvo Doctrine also holds with respect to the
Calvo Clause. As Donald R. Shea concluded in his comprehensive study, most Latin
American states would concede the exception of ‘a real denial of justice from the
contractual ban on intervention’. The Calvo Clause: A Problem of Inter-American and
International Law and Diplomacy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1955),
at p. 36.
40
31 March 1926, IV RIAA 26.
29
Denial of Justice in International Law
million dollars, then a substantial sum of money,41 on behalf of a company which in 1912 had entered into a contract for dredging the port of
Salina Cruz. It contained, in Article 18, a Calvo Clause reading as follows:
The contractor and all persons who, as employees or in any other capacity, may
be engaged in the execution of the work under this contract either directly or
indirectly, shall be considered as Mexicans in all matters, within the Republic of
Mexico, concerning the execution of such work and the fulfilment of this contract. They shall not claim, nor shall they have, with regard to the interests and
the business connected with this contract, any other rights or means to enforce
the same than those granted by the laws of the Republic to Mexicans, nor shall
they enjoy any other rights than those established in favor of Mexicans. They are
consequently deprived of any rights as aliens, and under no conditions shall the
intervention of foreign diplomatic agents be permitted, in any matter related to
this contract.
The Commission had held that, in a parallel case, it had jurisdiction to
hear contractual claims. The issue was whether Article 18 defeated
jurisdiction in this case. Upholding Mexico’s demurrer, the Commission
stated that it was not ‘impressed’ by arguments at the ‘extremes’, i.e.
either wholly endorsing or wholly rejecting Calvo Clauses:
The Calvo clause in a specific contract is neither a clause which must be
sustained to its full length because of its contractual nature nor can it be
discretionarily separated from the rest of the contract as if it were just an
accidental postscript. The problem is not solved by saying yes or no; the
affirmative answer exposing the rights of foreigners to undeniable dangers, the
negative answer leaving to the nations involved no alternative except that of
exclusion of foreigners from business . . . By merely ignoring world-wide abuses
either of the right of national protection or of the right of national jurisdiction no
solution compatible with the requirements of modern international law can be
reached.42
Having thus identified the difficulty of its task, the Commission proceeded to ask whether there existed any rule of international law that
denied an individual:
the right to relinquish to any extent, large or small, and under any circumstances
or conditions, the protection of the government to which he owes allegiance.43
41
42
The US Consumer Price Index yields a multiplier of 10.37 from 1926 to 2003.
North American Dredging Company of Texas, IV RIAA 26 at p. 27. 43 Ibid. at p. 28.
30
The historical evolution of denial of justice
The Commissioners noted that any such imagined prohibition would run
counter to ‘the existing laws of progressive, enlightened civilisation’ that a
person may voluntarily expatriate himself. Why should he not, short of
expatriation, be able to undertake by contract to limit his entitlements as a
foreigner?
This question the Commission answered in the affirmative, in
the process delivering a stinging rebuke both to Palmerstonian imperialism44 and to the claimant.45 Nevertheless, the Commission noted that the
clause could not take from a foreign national:
his undoubted right to apply to his own Government for protection if his resort to
the Mexican tribunals or other authorities available to him resulted in a denial or
delay of justice as that term is used in international law.46
In the case before it, the claimant’s grievance arose under a contract
which it had agreed should be subject to the authority of the Mexican
courts. The Commission refused to take cognisance of the claim because
it was not ‘based on an alleged violation of any rule or principle of
international law’ and therefore fell under the authority of the local courts
which the claimant had wrongfully ignored.
The nuanced manner in which the award in North American Dredging
upheld the relevant Calvo Clause was so successful in terms of articulating a viable distinction that it may be described as a watershed. From
1926 onward, it became exceedingly difficult for foreigners to deny the
validity of a Calvo Clause, and equally difficult for the local government
to insist that its scope extended to alleged violations of international
law.47 One may note the dissenting voice of Francisco V. Garcı́aAmador, who wrote that Calvo Clauses bar even claims of denial of justice
insofar as such grievances arise from contractual disputes.48 Yet it is
44
‘Inalienable rights have been the cornerstones of policies like those of the Holy Alliance of
Lord Palmerston; instead of bringing to the world the benefit of mutual understanding,
they are to weak or less fortunate nations an unrestrained menace.’ Ibid. at p. 30.
45
‘The record before this Commission strongly suggests that the claimant used article 18
to procure the contract with no intention of ever observing its provisions.’ Ibid. at p. 32.
46
Ibid. at p. 30.
47
A Brazilian scholar has concluded that the North American Dredging approach is
supported ‘by the majority of international arbitral jurisprudence after 1926’,
Leandro Vieira Silva, ‘Latin America and the Concept of ‘‘Denial of Justice’’’ (thesis
for an LL M in public international law, Leiden University, 2000, unpublished, at p. 2).
Vieira Silva appears to have relied significantly on the primary research of Shea,
The Calvo Clause.
48
Francisco V. Garcı́a-Amador, ‘State Responsibility: Some New Problems’, (1958) 94
Recueil des Cours, vol. II, 369, at p. 458.
31
Denial of Justice in International Law
difficult to be persuaded by his affirmation that contractual interests and
rights are not ‘in the same class as the other rights enjoyed by the alien in
international law’. There is no corroborative authority for this singular
proposition. Garcı́a-Amador’s argument was that contractual rights
were less protected because they are matters of volition, and that there
is no reason to limit the scope of voluntary relinquishment of rights. The
obvious refutation is that no party having access to an international
jurisdiction would opt for national courts if that means acceptance to be
mistreated and to leave such mistreatment to be appreciated by the very
courts which inflicted it.
As a matter of strict logic, one might wonder why an alien – on the
path of piecemeal ‘expatriation’ to use the Commission’s analogy –
could not waive diplomatic protection with respect to claims under
international law as well. The Commission’s response was that an alien
cannot:
deprive the government of his nation of its undoubted right of applying international remedies to violations of international law committed to his damage. Such
government frequently has a larger interest in maintaining the principles of
international law than in recovering damage for one of its citizens in a particular
case, and manifestly such citizen can not by contract tie in this respect the hands
of his Government.49
If that is so, a respondent state in a context where there is no issue of
diplomatic protection, such as that of claims brought under an investmentprotection treaty where the investor exercises an option to bring his
grievance before national courts, should be able to argue that that choice
extinguishes the possibility of subsequent attempts to seek international
remedies, whether or not the breach is one of international law.
(The relevant breach of international law in such cases would generally
be alleged violation of the treaty itself.)
The unavoidable exceptions would be cases of denial of justice. And
that is precisely one of the reasons why this old cause of action is
resurgent.
A theoretically interesting question would arise if a foreigner is entitled
to access to an international tribunal, say by virtue of a bilateral investment treaty, but has entered into a contract with the state which expressly
provides that all disputes relating to that contract, whether relating
to grievances allegedly arising under national or international law, are to
49
North American Dredging Company of Texas, IV RIAA 26, at p. 29.
32
The historical evolution of denial of justice
be exclusively and finally determined by a national court or arbitral
tribunal.50 That an international tribunal entitled to apply international
law is not constrained by national law is abundantly clear.51 But why
should international law not respect a contractual stipulation by which
the foreigner agrees that all controversies arising out of a given legal
relationship are to be determined by a given national jurisdiction?
Should the foreigner, like a consumer under national law, be assisted by
a presumption that the stipulation is oppressive, and therefore to be
disregarded as contrary to international public order? Or should international public order be deemed to reject attempts to exclude the entitlement of international tribunals to apply international law irrespective of
the subjective situation of the foreigner? Should the fact that the treaty
50
This issue was reserved in two important cases, Compañı́a de Aguas del Aconquija S. A. and
Vivendi Universal (formerly Compagnie Générale des Eaux) v. Argentina, award, 21 November
2000, 5 ICSID Reports 296; (2001) 40 ILM 426 (Buergenthal, Trooboff, Rezek (presiding)); and SGS Société Générale de Surveillance S. A. v. Republic of the Philippines, decision on
objections to jurisdiction, 29 January 2004, 8 ICSID Reports 518 (Crawford, Crivellaro,
El-Kosheri (presiding)).
51
As the ICJ put it in Anglo-Norwegian Fisheries case (UK v. Norway), 1951 ICJ Reports 116, at
p. 132, maritime delimitation is not ‘dependent merely upon the will of the coastal
State as expressed in its municipal law . . . the validity of the delimitation with regard
to other States depends upon international law’. Similarly, the ICJ in Nottebohm made
clear that the internal criteria of nationality were not binding at the level of international law; The Nottebohm case (Liechtenstein v. Guatemala), 1955 ICJ Reports 4, at
pp. 20–21. Thirty years earlier, the Permanent Court of International Justice had
observed that: ‘From the standpoint of International Law and of the Court which is
its organ, municipal laws are merely facts which express the will and constitute the
activities of States, in the same manner as do legal decisions or administrative measures. The Court is certainly not called upon to interpret the Polish law as such; but
there is nothing to prevent the Court’s giving judgment on the question whether or not,
in applying that law, Poland is acting in conformity with its obligations towards
Germany under the Geneva Convention’ (Case concerning Certain German Interests in
Polish Upper Silesia (Germany v. Poland) (The Merits), (1935) PCIJ, Series A, No. 7, 5, at
p. 19). In sum: ‘An act of a State must be characterized as internationally wrongful if it
constitutes a breach of an international obligation, even if the act does not contravene
the State’s internal law – even if under that law, the State was actually bound to act in that
way’ (James Crawford, The International Law Commission’s Articles on State Responsibility:
Introduction, Text and Commentaries (Cambridge University Press, 2002), at p. 86).
With respect to our subject, Edwin M. Borchard wrote, in The Diplomatic Protection of
Citizens Abroad, at p. 335: ‘It is hardly to be supposed that any foreign state, even
among those which have concluded treaties with Latin American republics providing
for a renunciation of diplomatic interposition in all cases except denial of justice,
would consider itself bound by a municipal legislative interpretation of the term
‘denial of justice’.’ (States are not to be assumed to legislate in intentional breach of
international law. Therefore national laws should be interpreted, if possible, to
achieve conformity with international law, Oppenheim, vol. I, at p. 82.)
33
Denial of Justice in International Law
which creates the international jurisdiction establishes an exceptional
condition in favour of the state by excluding diplomatic protection, for
example by referring to arbitration under the ICSID Convention, Article
27 of which has precisely that effect, imply the transposition into such
disputes of the rule of the North American Dredging case?
These questions would be likely to generate intense controversy. They
are, however, unlikely to arise in practice. It is difficult to imagine a freely
negotiated clause by which a party accepts that all of its disputes shall be
finally adjudicated by the organs of its co-contractant, even if they turn
out to be manifestly biased. Whether or not an economic suicide pact
should be countenanced under international law may therefore be left as
an open question.
The North American Dredging award also stands for the proposition that a
Calvo Clause may nullify a waiver of exhaustion of local remedies. The
reason is that the treaty under which the Commission operated contained
precisely such a waiver, which the Commission deemed to be limited to
claims ‘rightfully presented’, with the effect of barring a claimant who had
failed to comply with a fundamental contractual term – namely the Calvo
Clause. This aspect of the case was criticised by Freeman52 and others,53
and was pointedly disregarded by a domestic commission, composed of
three US nationals, established by the US Congress in order to apportion
a Mexican settlement en bloc.54 Nevertheless, it retains powerful support55
and gives rise to this intriguing question: may the harmony between
Calvo Clauses, as understood in North American Dredging, and the delict of
denial of justice be said to be perfected by a similar rule in connection with
the latter, to the effect that denial of justice requires exhaustion irrespective of a general waiver? This will be the focus of Chapter 5.
At any rate, the century-old dialogue of the deaf now appears to be
largely over. As nations have developed, and their officials have become
more accountable to broader strata of their population, their focus is less
on why aliens should be entitled to treatment in accordance with international standards and more on why their own citizens should not be
accorded the same level of protection even as a matter of national law.
52
Freeman at pp. 481–482.
See, e.g., Edwin M. Borchard, ‘Decisions of Claims Commissions, United States and
Mexico’, (1926) 10 AJIL 536, at p. 540; and K. Lipstein, ‘The Place of the Calvo
Clause in International Law’, (1945) 22 BYIL 130, at pp. 144–145.
54
The US Commission awarded US$128,627 to the company; see ILC, Third Report on
Diplomatic Protection Addendum 1, p. 12, note 44.
55
Shea, The Calvo Clause, at pp. 229–230, note 89.
53
34
The historical evolution of denial of justice
Governments which continue to represent dictatorships now find it difficult to complain about the international minimum standards enshrined in
multilateral treaties such as the UN International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (1966); regional instruments such as the American
Convention on Human Rights (1969) or the African Charter on
Human and Peoples’ Rights (1981); or in the numerous bilateral treaties
for the protection of foreign investments.
If Calvo was the emblematic spokesman of Latin American countries,
and of small countries generally, in the nineteenth century, so Eduardo
Jiménez de Aréchaga may be viewed as his counterpart in the twentieth
century. He was a statesman-scholar who had been both professor of
international law and Minister of the Interior in Uruguay56 before his
election to the International Court of Justice and his appointment to the
World Bank Administrative Tribunal, both of which he was to serve as
President. When Jiménez de Aréchaga gave the General Course in
Public International Law at the Hague Academy in 1978, he affirmed
that the notion that the conduct of courts is not attributable to governments could no longer be said to reflect international law, and confirmed the international responsibility of states for denial of justice in a
broad sense.57 Perhaps most importantly, he presided over the ICSID
arbitral tribunal which in 1988 handed down its jurisdictional decision
in the SPP v. Egypt (Pyramids Oasis) case,58 a landmark among modern
investment arbitrations involving states; it was the first case of a direct
international claim brought by a private investor against a state in the
absence of an original arbitration agreement between the claimant and
the respondent.59
Like Calvo but a century later, African scholars who expressed doubts
as to the legitimacy of an international legal order in which their newly
independent states had not participated have since accepted, as they
56
As well as Rapporteur of the Committee of the Whole in the United Nations
Conference on the Law of Treaties (Vienna, 1968–69).
57
E. Jiménez de Aréchaga, ‘International Law in the Past Third of a Century’, (1978) 159
Recueil des Cours, vol. I, at p. 278.
58
Southern Pacific Properties (Middle East) Limited v. Egypt, decision on jurisdiction (No. 2),
14 April 1988, 3 ICSID Reports 131 (El Mehdi, Pietrowski, Jiménez de Aréchaga
(presiding)). The decision was reached by a two-to-one majority over a comprehensive
dissent by the Egyptian member of the tribunal; ibid. at p. 163. If Jiménez de Aréchaga
had gone the other way, the modern face of investment arbitration would be
unrecognisable.
59
J. Paulsson, ‘Arbitration Without Privity’, (1995) 10 ICSID Review 232.
35
Denial of Justice in International Law
must, that ‘municipal courts should not be the final judges of the compatibility of national treatment with the standards of international law’.60
The surpassingly important point is the ascension of the primacy of
international law, grounded in a multitude of international commitments
too numerous to mention, and too universal in their origins to admit of
complaints that they have been imposed by disproportionate power or
other undue influence.
Sometimes these sources of international norms require higher than
national standards of treatment, sometimes not. That is a matter of
substance, to be enforced by the competent jurisdiction. That, today,
means international adjudication.
The history of denial of justice is happily one of declining violence.
In its initial medieval tradition, it was the justification of private reprisals
under letters of warrant. That type of force was proscribed by the establishment of the monopoly of the state; international delicts came to be
prosecuted by the mechanism of diplomatic protection. Such protection
could culminate in violent coercion and abuse, but at least it was centralised and subject to some form of systematisation and formal dialogue.
If today the international delict has become a principle applied by international tribunals, acting on the initiative of private litigants whose
principal hope of remedy is that provided by legal processes, surely the
evolution is salutary.
Summary
National laws offer fundamentally different definitions of denial of justice.
It is therefore dangerous to import such definitions into international law.
A state’s international responsibility arises as a result of the failure of a
national legal system to provide due process. International law judges the
national system from the outside. This a national supreme court cannot
do, because it is a part of the system, and it too must accept that its actions
be evaluated by an international authority. The international understanding of denial of justice as a systemic failure is inconceivable at the
national level.
The origins of the delict of denial of justice were intimately connected
with the medieval regime of reprisals. Once states imposed their oligopoly
60
Felix Chuks Okoye, International Law and the New African States (London: Sweet &
Maxwell, 1972), at p. 179. See also the quotation from Amerasinghe, at Note 6 to
Chapter 1, above.
36
The historical evolution of denial of justice
over the system of international protection, private unilateral reprisals
were replaced by state-sponsored unilateral reprisals couched in terms of
‘diplomatic’ protection and espousal of claims of nationals. Vulnerable
new states tended to view the delict with misgivings, as a rule too easily
abused by the powerful. The legitimacy of unilateral force as an ultimate
sanction for denials of justice endured until well into the twentieth
century, when international law generally forbade recourse to force as a
means of settling disputes.
The Latin American Calvo Doctrine maintained that aliens could have
no greater rights than nationals, and that they therefore should be limited
to local legal remedies. In its purest expression, the Calvo Doctrine
embodies a rejection of international law. It did not win the day. Calvo
Clauses, on the other hand, have had a significant impact. Although they
have taken many forms, they basically constitute a contractual waiver by
aliens, as a condition of entry into a country (notably as traders, builders
or investors), not to have recourse to international fora. Even Latin
American jurists have, however, accepted the doctrine of the North
American Dredging award of 1926 to the effect that even though such a
clause excludes the international adjudication of contractual or other
claims under national law it cannot close the door to international
adjudication of violations of international law. The latter category
includes denial of justice, and in some cases perhaps only denial of justice.
The North American Dredging award should also be read to accept that a
Calvo Clause may invalidate a general waiver of exhaustion of local
remedies. The validity of such waivers in the context of claims of denial
of justice merits particular attention. If they are invalid there, the rule of
denial of justice is revealed as consistent with Calvo Clauses. This matter
will be examined in Chapter 5.
37
3
Three fundamental developments
State responsibility for the conduct of the judiciary
Long ago, some authors – and indeed tribunals – argued that it would be
wrong to hold a government liable for the conduct of courts having a
constitutional mandate to operate independently. Since the government
could not, in principle, dictate the conduct of national judges, their acts
should not be attributed to the government; unlike the executive and the
legislature, they should not be taken to ‘represent the expression of its
will’.1 Thus, the Senate of Hamburg, when adjudicating the case of Yuille,
Shortridge & Co., a British claim for private losses suffered as a consequence
of a Portuguese judgment, declared in its award in 1861 that it would be
‘altogether unjust’ to require the Portuguese government ‘to answer for
the misconduct of its courts’ since the Portuguese constitution decreed the
courts to be ‘completely independent of the Government and the latter
was consequently unable to exert any influence over their decisions’.2
Whatever significance may be attributed to the independence of the
judiciary as a matter of internal law, the notion that courts could somehow be separate from their states is unacceptable internationally. As
Professor Charles Dupuis wrote in 1924: the state is ‘no more entitled
to disavow the law of nations by using judicial authority than by a fancy of
Parliament or by outrageous conduct of the government’.3
1
T. Baty, The Canons of International Law (London: John Murray, 1930), at pp. 127–128.
21 October 1861, A. de Lapradelle and N. Politis, Recueil des arbitrages internationaux, vol. I,
78, at p. 103, para. 30.
3
The present author’s translation. In the original: ‘Il ne lui est pas plus loisible de rompre
avec le droit des gens par autorité de justice que par fantaisie de Parlement ou par
2
38
Three fundamental developments
Freeman had no hesitation in proclaiming that the notion of national
courts as immune from international criticism had come to be held
‘generally in abject disrepute’.4 The argument, he wrote, carries the
principle of the separation of powers ‘into a domain in which it is
irrelevant’; although the courts may be independent of the government,
they are not separate from the state. He concluded that:
Whether the infraction of a given obligation under the law of nations proceeds
from legislative, administrative, or judicial activity is immaterial . . . Only
through its component organs does the State exist and function.5
As a participant in the processes of international law, the state is always
to be perceived as acting as a unit; its various constituent elements are not
discrete actors.6 Parliaments have been known to reject the promptings of
the executive; this independence does not mean that acts of legislature are
not imputable to the state.
Indeed, in a profound sense the courts cannot from the international
perspective be independent of the state, for the reason that they are bound
by local legislation. If that legislation itself is violative of international law,
the delict cannot be neutralised by being applied through the mechanism
of a court judgment.
In an oft-cited passage from his 1978 General Course in Public
International Law at the Hague Academy, Judge Eduardo Jiménez de
Aréchaga unequivocally confirmed the development Freeman had
observed and endorsed forty years before:
in the present century State responsibility for judicial acts came to be recognized.
Although independent of Government, the judiciary is not independent of the
State: the judgment given by a judicial authority emanates from an organ of the
State in just the same way as a law promulgated by the legislature or a decision
taken by the executive.7
The controversial Guerrero Report of 19308 postulated that a national
judgment was absolutely sovereign and once rendered could not be
questioned internationally on any grounds whatsoever. Apart from any
outrecuidance de gouvernement’, C. Dupuis, ‘Liberté des voies de communication et
les Relations internationales’ (1924) Recueil des Cours, vol. I, 129, at p. 354.
4
Freeman at p. 31. 5 Ibid. at p. 28. 6 Accord, de Visscher at p. 376.
7
Jiménez de Aréchaga, ‘International Law in the Past Third of a Century’, (1978) 159
Recueil des Cours, vol. I, at p. 278.
8
Gustavo Guerrero, Annex to Questionnaire No. 4, Committee of Experts for the
Progressive Codification of International Law, Report of the Sub-committee, League of
Nations Document C.196.M.70.1927.V.
39
Denial of Justice in International Law
recourse available under domestic law, it was an inviolable res judicata.
This notion had been advanced in a judgment of the Supreme Court of
Peru in 1927 in order to defeat a Cuban claim against the government.9 It
was curiously resuscitated by the Peruvian President Fujimori seventy
years later, as he castigated the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
for having dared to question extraordinary decisions of his subservient
judiciary in the twilight of his rule (see the section on ‘Responses to the
anti-international critiques’ in Chapter 9). De Visscher, referring back to
Guerrero and the Peruvian judgment, wrote simply as follows:
The treatment of foreigners is guaranteed by international law, and it is not
within the capacity of national law to limit the state’s international obligations by
the expedient invocation of the principle of equality [ between foreigners and
nationals]. As for the principle of res judicata, we know that it is applicable only in
the internal legal order and may not be invoked in relations between states.10
It is no longer seriously possibly to contend that the nature of national
judicial bodies is so different from other governmental instrumentalities that
the state is insulated from international liability on account of judicial conduct. The ILC Articles on the Responsibility of States for Internationally
Wrongful Acts, adopted in 2001, contain the following Article 4(1):
The conduct of any State organ shall be considered an act of that State under
international law, whether the organ exercises legislative, executive, judicial or any other functions,
whatever position it holds in the organization of the State, and whatever its character
as an organ of the central government or of a territorial unit of the State.11
The ILC Articles are not innovative in this respect; they simply reflect
the emergence of a clear consensus. The principle of state responsibility
for judicial conduct was not, however, established without a struggle. It is
worthwhile examining why the debate was resolved in this way.
If the judiciary were somehow internationally immunised because of its
internal independence from the executive, no international wrong could be
imputed to the state as a result of judicial acts or omissions. This would be
intolerable, because the primary instrumentality of a state giving effect to
diplomatic privileges or immunities is the judiciary. A failure to respect such
9
Cantero-Herrera v. Canevaro and Co., 25 May 1927, 1927–28 Annual Digest of Public
International Law Cases 219.
10
De Visscher at p. 387, citing Gidel’s translation of D. Anzilotti’s Course in International
Law, at p. 480.
11
International Law Commission, Draft articles on Responsibility of States for internationally wrongful acts, UN Doc. A/56/10 (2001) Article 4(1) (emphasis added).
40
Three fundamental developments
rights is a violation of international law for which the state is responsible.
The same would be true if a court purported to assert jurisdiction under a
treaty but exceeded the powers defined therein, or if it refused to give effect
to rights – like intellectual property rights, or the right to bring suit without
providing security for costs – which may be treaty-created. Such delicts
establish international responsibility, much like contemporary treaties dealing with the treatment of foreign defendants under criminal law which go to
the heart of the matter of denial of justice, for example those requiring
timely and specific indictments, or notice to consular agents. International
duties would be reduced to pointlessness if the most important agents of
their performance, the courts, were immune from criticism of the way they
interpret obligations under the relevant treaty.
The theoretical grounds against distinguishing judicial acts from other
acts of state instrumentalities have the fortunate consequence of making it
unnecessary and irrelevant to question the constitutional choices made by
states. It would be difficult and fruitlessly controversial to seek to establish
and apply an international definition of judicial bodies (as would be
necessary if they were to be given special status). Is a tribunal judicial
because it is obligatory rather than consensual? If so, the Soviet-era courts
of arbitration would probably qualify. Is the test independence? If so, not
only would one invite divisive and sensitive debates about ordinary courts,
but open the door to claims to immunity by many types of agencies
created by the government to deal with the complaints of citizens or to
monitor the performance of governmental services; yet such agencies may
have the authority to affect the rights of individuals without the semblance
of judicial process. Indeed, that is true for a myriad public administrations
created under vastly different constitutional regimes. The proper view, as
this study seeks to demonstrate, is that uncorrected deprivations by such
agencies would constitute denials of justice under international law. For
this to be so, the ostensible correcting instrumentality, that is to say
whatever authority set up to sanction maladministration, cannot be
given any greater deference than the initially wrongdoing agency.
A compelling precedent was established in 2001 by the jurisdictional
decision of the ICSID tribunal in the Loewen case.12 The claimants alleged
that the USA was liable under the North American Free Trade Agreement
12
Loewen, 5 January 2001. The Tribunal was composed of Sir Anthony Mason, President,
Hon. Abner J. Mikva, and Yves Fortier QC. By the time the Tribunal rendered its final
award, Loewen, 26 June 2003, which is of capital importance to the subject of this book,
Fortier had resigned and been replaced by Lord Mustill.
41
Denial of Justice in International Law
(NAFTA) for alleged misconduct by the courts of Mississippi. The USA
raised five jurisdictional objections. Four were joined to the merits, so the
2001 decision dealt with only the first objection, which was to the following
effect:
the claim is not arbitrable because the judgments of domestic courts in purely
private disputes are not ‘measures adopted or maintained by a Party’ within the
scope of NAFTA Chapter II.
The claimants alleged that the conduct of the courts of Mississippi had
violated the NAFTA obligation (under Article 1105) to provide ‘full
protection and security’ to foreign investors. The USA objected that
such obligations can (under Article 1101(1)) arise only from ‘measures
adopted or maintained’ by one of the state signatories to NAFTA. The
Tribunal held as follows:
Article 201 defines ‘measure’ as including ‘any law, regulation, procedure, requirement or practice’. The breadth of this inclusive definition, notably the references to
‘law, procedure, requirement or practice’, is inconsistent with the notion that
judicial action is an exclusion from the generality of the expression ‘measures’.
‘Law’ comprehends judge-made as well as statute-based rules. ‘Procedure’ is apt to
include judicial as well as legislative procedure. ‘Requirement’ is capable of
covering a court order which requires a party to do an act or to pay a sum of
money, while ‘practice’ is capable of denoting the practice of courts as well as the
practice of other bodies.13
Citing with approval the passage quoted above from Jiménez
de Aréchaga, the tribunal noted that the claimants characterised their
grievances as arising from violations of international law and a denial of
justice. The arbitrators proceeded without hesitation to attribute the acts of
the courts of a federated state to the central government, even against the
argument that Article 1101(1) of NAFTA constitutes what one might refer
to as a narrower jurisdictional lex specialis. Their reasoning is worth considering with care, considering the multiplicity of international investment
treaties that might be argued to contain specific jurisdictional hurdles:
The question . . . arises whether the words ‘measures adopted or maintained
by a Party’ should be understood, as the Respondent argues, to exclude judicial
acts being the judgments of domestic courts in purely private matters. The
purpose of Chapter Eleven, ‘Section B – Settlement of Disputes between a
Party and an Investor of Another Party’ is to establish ‘a mechanism for the
13
Loewen, 5 January 2001, at para. 40.
42
Three fundamental developments
settlement of investment disputes that assures both equal treatment among
investors of the Parties in accordance with the principle of international
reciprocity and due process before an arbitral tribunal’. The text, context
and purpose of Chapter Eleven combine to support a liberal rather than a
restricted interpretation of the words ‘measures adopted or maintained by a
Party’, that is, an interpretation which provides protection and security for the
foreign investor and its investment: see Ethyl Corporation v. Canada, Award on
Jurisdiction, June 24, 1998, 38 ILM 708, (where the NAFTA Tribunal concluded that the object and purpose of Chapter Eleven is to ‘create effective
procedures . . . for the resolution of disputes’ and to ‘increase substantially
investment opportunities’ (at 83)).
Neither in the text or context of NAFTA nor in international law is there to be
found support for the Respondent’s submission that ‘measures adopted
or maintained by a Party’, in its application to judicial acts, excludes the judgments of domestic courts in purely private disputes. Neither the definition of
‘measure’ in Article 201 nor the provisions of Chapters 10 and 17 relating
to ‘measures’ and ‘procedures’ contain any indication that, in its application to
judicial acts, the existence of a measure depends upon the identity of the litigants
or the characterisation of the dispute as public or private. An adequate mechanism for the settlement of disputes as contemplated by 11 must extend to disputes,
whether public or private, so long as the state Party is responsible for the judicial
act which constitutes the ‘measure’ complained of, and that act constitutes a
breach of a NAFTA obligation, as for example a discriminatory precedential
judicial decision. The principle that a state is responsible for the decisions of its
municipal courts (or at least its highest court) supports the wider interpretation of
the expression ‘measure adopted or maintained by a Party’ rather than the
restricted interpretation advanced by the Respondent.
Generally speaking, litigation between private parties is less likely to generate
a ‘measure adopted or maintained by a Party’ but, in some circumstances,
private litigation may do so . . .
As the Claimants submit, the Mississippi trial court’s judgment ordering
Loewen to pay O’Keefe $500 million and the Mississippi Supreme Court
requirement that Loewen post a $625 million bond were ‘requirements’ within
the meaning of the definition of ‘measure’ in Article 201, subject to consideration of Article 1121, the principle of finality of judicial acts and the rule of
exhaustion of local remedies.
The Respondent argues that the words ‘adopted or maintained’ in Article
1101 are indicative of an intent to limit Chapter 11 to those actions that involve
ratification by government. This limitation, so the Respondent submits,
accords with the ‘act of state’ doctrine. That doctrine is a doctrine of municipal
rather than international law . . .
Whatever the effect of the act of State doctrine may be, Article 1105, in
requiring a Party to provide ‘full protection and security’ to investments
43
Denial of Justice in International Law
of investors, must extend to the protection of foreign investors from private
parties when they act through the judicial organs of the State.14
The ‘circumstances’ referred to in the third paragraph of this passage
were left undefined, but obviously included the circumstances that
amounted to the miscarriage of justice alleged in this case (and which
the subsequent final award found to have existed; see Chapter 6).
One of the last vain attempts by a state to avoid having to account for
the actions of its judiciary occurred in The Last Temptation of Christ case,15
involving censorship, where the Government of Chile tried to argue that
an act of the judiciary in violation of international law could be attributed
to the state only if the executive branch acquiesced in it. The InterAmerican Court of Human Rights had no hesitation in holding that
‘the international responsibility of the State may be engaged by acts
or omissions of any power or organ of the State, whatever its rank, that
violate the American Convention’.
Denial of justice by non-judicial authority
In the past, some authors sought to define denial of justice in such a
fashion as to limit it to the conduct of judicial officials. This approach is
indefensible. If justice has been denied by officials whose conduct is
imputable to the state, it makes no sense to exclude liability because
those officials do not have a particular title as a matter of national
regulation. The purpose of the delict is to oblige states ‘not to administer
justice in a notoriously unjust manner’ – to repeat Irizarry y Puente’s
formulation.16 If it is established that justice has been so maladministered,
it is impossible to see why the state should escape sanction because the
wrong was perpetrated by one category of its agents rather than
another.17 Surely it would be a denial of justice for the executive to refuse
14
Ibid. at paras. 53–58.
Olmedo Bustos et al. v. Chile (Merits), 5 February 2001, Inter-American Court of Human
Rights, Series C, No. 73 at para. 72 (prior censorship of a motion picture held to be a
violation of freedom of expression).
16
Irizarry y Puente, ‘Denial of Justice’, at p. 406.
17
To dispose of a trivial issue, obviously formal titles are not decisive; the adequacy of a state’s
judicial machinery is to be assessed by reference to the conduct of those of its officials who
serve in a judicial capacity. Thus, for example, the Portuguese administrative officials who
were charged with the registration of deeds which were the focus of the Croft case,
UK v. Portugal, 7 February 1856, A. de Lapradelle and N. Politis, Recueil des arbitrages
internationaux, vol. II, at p. 22 (see the section on ‘No responsibility for misapplication of
national law’ in Chapter 4) were found by the arbitral tribunal to have acted judicially.
15
44
Three fundamental developments
to appoint judges to the only jurisdiction competent to hear a particular
type of case, or to adopt a decree that has the effect of invalidating the
contractual terms of a single contract to the benefit of the government and
the detriment of its alien co-contractant; just as it would be a denial of
justice for the legislature to edict astronomical filing fees for foreigners.
Yet in no such case would the act or omission be that of a judicial officer.
It is impossible to discern any logic behind this approach except an a
priori objective of reducing the scope of state liability by any means. If that
is so, it should be admitted as such and seen for what it is.
As de Visscher wrote:
The important thing as an international matter is not the determination of the state
organ to which one may attribute, under constitutional law, the origin of the state’s
failure in its duty: the sole decisive element is the act in which this failure manifested
itself in international relations. If it partakes of the jurisdictional order, one is in the
presence of a denial of justice in the meaning we attribute to this expression.18
If it is unclear whether a given function ‘partakes of the jurisdictional
order’, de Visscher’s view was simply that jurisdictional action is one
which leads to a legal conclusion, which, as a matter of national law, is
considered to have res judicata effect.19
Commissioner Van Vollenhoven’s opinion in the Chattin case of 192720
insisted at some length on the need to limit the ambit of denial of justice to
claims of wrongdoing by judicial officers and no others. Freeman criticised this approach in 1938.21 Half a century later, Amco II squarely
confronted commissioner Van Vollenhoven’s statement in Chattin to the
effect that acts of the judiciary alone can constitute denial of justice, and
repudiated it in these terms:
Most arbitral awards do not make this distinction in the context of denial of
justice . . . the Tribunal sees no provision of international law that makes impossible a denial of justice by an administrative body.22
Of course the delict must be circumscribed in such a way as to allow
us to identify it and to achieve a useful understanding of the way the
18
De Visscher at p. 391. 19 Ibid. at p. 396.
USA v. Mexico, 23 July 1927, IV RIAA 282. 21 Freeman at p. 21.
22
Amco II at para. 137. See also Secretary of State Fish’s instructions to his minister in Mexico
City on 2 January 1873: ‘Where a claimant on a foreign country has, by the law of such
country, ‘‘the choice of either the judicial or the administrative branch of the Government
through which to seek relief,’’ and selects the latter, this does not make the arbitrary
decision of the latter against him final and conclusive’ ( J. B. Moore, A Digest of International
Law (8 vols., Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1906), vol. VI, at p. 696).
20
45
Denial of Justice in International Law
abstraction is intended to affect reality. It is not helpful to postulate, as
some writers once were said to have done, that denial of justice corresponds to all violations owed to foreigners under international law.23 The
proposition is so broad that it would become a synonym for breach, and
therefore meaningless.
But once one accepts as the fundamental postulate of the delict that
states have an obligation to maintain a decent and available system of
justice, it simply cannot be accepted that the state should be freed from
its obligation by the simple expedient of preventing or perverting the
judicial process by executive or legislative fiat.24
Reading the old awards from the late nineteenth or early twentieth
century, one needs to be very careful about arguments or holdings to the
effect that the executive and legislative branches of government should be
23
The popular culprits, cited over and over again in the literature, are Professor C. C. Hyde
and Dr Fred K. Nielsen. In his two-volume treatise published in 1922, International Law
Chiefly as Interpreted and Applied by the United States, Hyde wrote as follows: ‘A denial of justice,
in a broad sense, occurs whenever a state, through any department or agency, fails to
observe with respect to an alien, any duty imposed by international law or by treaty with
his country.’ (2 vols., Little, Brown and Co., Boston, 1922), vol. I, at p. 491.
Nielsen, a US appointee on the US–Mexican Claims Commission, stated in the Neer
case that: ‘a denial of justice may, broadly speaking, be properly regarded as the general
ground of diplomatic intervention’ (L. F. H. Neer and Pauline Neer (US v. Mexico), 15 October
1926, IV RIAA 60, at p. 64; further similar expressions are quoted in Freeman at p. 98).
Commentators seem to have enjoyed demolishing the ‘broad view’ of Hyde and
Nielsen. Thus, ‘If denial of justice is used to refer to all governmental acts . . . the
expression would be robbed of all value as a technical distinction’ (Freeman at p. 105).
Under this definition, wrote Eagleton, ‘the term ‘‘denial of justice’’ would appear to be
superfluous and confusing and proper to be eliminated’ (The Responsibility of States in
International Law (New York University Press, 1928), at p. 112). De Visscher wrote, at
386: ‘used this way, the expression loses all intrinsic value and is but a source of confusion’.
Even President Van Vollenhoven of the Mexican Claims Commission was moved in the
Chattin case to write that under this conception ‘there would exist no international wrong
which would not be covered by the phrase ‘‘denial of justice’’’ (US v. Mexico, 23 July 1927,
IV RIAA 282, at p. 286).
Fitzmaurice was no less critical. ‘The main objection to this definition’, he wrote,
‘is that it converts the term into a species of synonym for international delinquency’; he
observed that it would appear to cover the imposition of a tax in contravention of a
treaty provision, or the failure to provide police protection; Fitzmaurice at p. 95. Yet he
was perhaps fairer in acknowledging that Hyde and Nielsen’s incidental comments,
which Fitzmaurice referred to as ‘dicta’, but which appear to have sprouted wings and
relegated their authors to the role of straw men for several generations, were ‘limited by
the context’ of examining the conditions of diplomatic intervention in the event of
failure to give redress for prior wrongful conduct.
24
Unambiguous support for this conclusion is to be found in Eagleton, Responsibility of States, at
p. 545; Fitzmaurice, at p. 105; Irizarry y Puente, ‘Denial of Justice’, at p. 403. The latter
refers, ibid., to ‘deficiency in the local legislation or arbitrary executive action’.
46
Three fundamental developments
equally susceptible to engaging the international responsibility of the state
as the judicial branch. Often such statements were made against a
historical background which gave rise to the view that denial of justice
by courts was the only form of injury to foreigners that legitimised
international protection. Thus, in ordinary cases of executive action
which we would today instantly recognise as expropriatory, the sponsors
of the claim, strenuously arguing that the acts of administrative organs of
the state could give rise to international responsibility for denial of justice,
were seeking to bring the claim within the scope of denial of justice
because they did not know what other terms to use to justify the espousal
of a claim by the mechanism of diplomatic protection. And so, for
example, the US Government in the Chase case found itself complaining
of the Panamanian Government’s failure ‘to provide the protection to
which the claimant’s property rights were entitled under the established
principles of international law’,25 and this grievance was naturally
thought of as sounding in denial of justice. Many of these cases have
nothing to do with denial of justice.26 Today the alleged wrong would be
articulated as a wrongful taking,27 or a failure of protection.28 The words
‘denial of justice’ would never be uttered.29
25
William Gerald Chase (US v. Panama), 29 June 1933, VI RIAA 352; the passage quoted
from the US memorial appears in B. L. Hunt, American and Panamanian General Claims
Arbitration under the Conventions between the United States and Panama of July 28, 1926, and
December 17, 1932, (US Department of State Arbitration Series, No. 6 (Washington,
DC: 1934), 341, at p. 356. The claim was unsuccessful; while governmental authorities
adopted inconsistent positions vis-à-vis Chase’s land rights, there was little discussion of
any miscarriage of justice given the fact, acknowledged by the commissioners, that
Chase’s alleged title had never been clear.
26
De Visscher at p. 385, perceived precisely this source of misunderstanding in the legal
literature, and anticipated its clarification. ‘Little by little, however, the authors have
come to acknowledge that international responsibility is not reduced to cases of denial
of justice, but indeed that denial of justice, even in the domain of protection of
foreigners, is but one category among others of conduct giving rise to international
responsibility.’
27
See, e.g., Wena Hotels Ltd v. Egypt, award, 8 December 2000, 6 ICSID Reports 89
(Fadlallah, Wallace, Leigh (presiding)).
28
See, e.g., Asian Agricultural Products Ltd v. Sri Lanka, award, 27 June 1990, 4 ICSID Reports
245 (Goldman, Asante, El-Kosheri (presiding)); American Manufacturing and Trading,
Inc. v. Zaire, award, 21 February 1997, 5 ICSID Reports 11 (Golsong, Mbaye,
Sucharitkul (presiding)).
29
As it happens, the Chase case did involve an element within the purview of denial of
justice, namely the failure of executive authorities to respect a Supreme Court judgment alleged to be dispositive of Mr Chase’s title to disputed lands. The judgment was,
however, ambiguous, and this was but an incidental aspect of the case.
47
Denial of Justice in International Law
This is the context in which it is useful to consider the two famous
awards rendered in the El Triunfo and Robert E. Brown cases.
El Triunfo30 involved an exclusive navigation concession granted by the
Government of El Salvador to a corporation whose principal shareholders were US nationals. The concession, which was part of a scheme
of macroeconomic importance to develop the port of El Triunfo, took
the form of a contract which, after competitive bidding, was signed by the
Government in October 1894 and ratified in accordance with
the Constitution by the legislature in May 1895. The obligations of the
concession holder were fully carried out and the relevant ministers and
inspector-general so acknowledged. The port was quickly opened, and
from the beginning of 1896 to late 1898 the volume of business of the port
was larger than even the most optimistic forecasts, increasing by between
400 per cent and 500 per cent. By the beginning of 1898, the concession
holder, called the El Triunfo Company, showed steady net profits (this too
acknowledged by the Government’s official accountant).
Yet on 14 February 1899 the President of the Republic issued a decree
closing the port of El Triunfo, effectively making the concession agreement a dead letter. Three months later, the same concession was granted
to citizens of El Salvador.
The ensuing claim is notable in that it involved the breach of a direct
contractual relationship with the Government. (El Triunfo is one of the
classic precedents, cited time and again throughout the twentieth century,
in connection with claims relating to international state contracts.) It
could also have been articulated as a claim sounding in expropriation
or discrimination. The award itself explains the basis of liability as the
finding that the concession had been ‘arbitrarily and unjustly revoked,
destroyed, and cancelled by the Republic of Salvador’.31 The expression
‘denial of justice’ does not appear in the award, but figures prominently in
the opinion of the two arbitrators forming the majority. They conceived
the role of denial of justice in two ways.
First, they noted that before the US could validly exercise its rights of
diplomatic protection, it must be shown that the US claimants ‘having
appealed to the courts of the Republic, have been denied justice by those
courts’. This notion gives us the key to a fundamental conceptual
30
US v. El Salvador, 8 May 1902, XV RIAA 455. Arbitral Tribunal composed of
Sir Henry Strong, Chief Justice of the Dominion of Canada; Donald M. Dickinson
(US) and Don José Rosa Pacas (El Salvador). Award rendered by a majority (Strong
and Dickinson).
31
Ibid. at p. 469.
48
Three fundamental developments
problem. For in this sense, denial of justice is merely a requirement for
diplomatic protection, i.e. a way of restating the need to exhaust local
remedies. The arbitrators thus considered that a denial of justice occurred
because the wrongful cancellation of the concession was not corrected by
national judicial authorities. This approach misapprehends both the
exhaustion requirement and the delict of denial of justice.
To exhaust local remedies, it is necessary to attempt to do so, or at least
to prove that any attempt would have been futile (see Chapter 5). That
may have been the case with respect to the El Triunfo Company, but
neither the award nor the majority opinion gives any indication that this
issue was explored and evaluated. As for denial of justice, it cannot be a
matter of res ipsa loquitur; wrongs unconnected with the administration of
justice do not automatically become denial of justice because the courts
do not correct them. Some act or omission constituting a miscarriage of
justice is required.
This brings us to the second way in which the award uses the expression
‘denial of justice’. We need to revert momentarily to the facts of this case,
which intriguingly anticipated the Barcelona Traction saga: foreign owners
of an important and prospering enterprise dispossessed by a conspiracy of
local rivals abusing corporate procedures to instigate meretricious bankruptcy proceedings. Thus a cabal including a certain Simon Sol, who had
led a consortium which had presented an unsuccessful bid at the inception
of the project, had taken advantage of the absence of the Company’s
president; Sol ‘assumed the office of president by clear usurpation’ and
proceeded to adopt an extraordinary resolution to petition for the bankruptcy of the company; within five days, a local court appointed a receiver
who immediately took possession of all corporate documents (these were
never restored, not even in the course of the arbitration). The American
members of the board ‘were driven from Salvador in fear of their lives’.
Reacting to these events, on 12 February 1899 the US shareholders
called for a meeting for the purpose of restoring the Company’s rights by
‘turning out the conspirators and installing a representative directorate’.
On 13 February, notice of the meeting was published in the Official
Journal of the Republic. On 14 February, the President of the
Republic, as seen, closed down the port, putting an effective end to the
concession. Thus, the majority arbitrators held, ‘the Government of
Salvador came to the aid of the conspirators and by executive act
destroyed the only thing of value worth retrieving through the courts’.
This action may readily have been attacked as a breach of contract or
as an unlawful dispossession, and there is every reason to think that it was
49
Denial of Justice in International Law
so perceived by the arbitrators. What is ambiguous is the opinion’s
approving reference to a US contention to the effect that: ‘Justice may
as much be denied when it would be absurd to seek it by judicial process as
if denied after being so sought’. This comment is apposite with respect to a
debate about the need to exhaust local remedies as a precondition to the
diplomatic espousal of the claim, or with respect to the sufficiency of an
initial miscarriage of justice if there is no reasonable prospect of an
effective appellate remedy (see Chapter 5). But to make a lawsuit pointless
is not per se a miscarriage of justice; conduct having that effect may have
no relation to the administration of justice. When the arbitrators went on
to say that ‘the obligation of parties to a contract to appeal for judicial
relief is reciprocal’, they showed that they were proceeding on a contractual footing, reproving the Government’s unilateral executive abrogation
of the concession. In sum, El Triunfo is not a precedent which properly
belongs in the field of denial of justice. If such a case were to arise today in
circumstances of direct access, without the need to show exhaustion of
local remedies, the words ‘denial of justice’ would be out of place in the
debate absent any suggestion that the claimants were actually stymied in
their efforts to petition the local courts.
Robert E. Brown32 provides an illuminating contrast. Brown was a US
national and engineer who had applied in 1895 for 1,200 gold-prospecting
licences in South Africa pursuant to a system established under a proclamation by President Kruger of the South African Republic. Kruger withdrew
his proclamation on the day following Brown’s application. Six days thereafter, the legislature (Volksraad) issued a resolution approving the withdrawal
of the first proclamation and decreeing that no person who had suffered
damage should recover compensation. The High Court of the Republic in
due course rendered a judgment in favour of Brown, declaring the Volksraad
resolution to be unconstitutional, ordering the issuance of the licences, and
inviting Brown to sue for damages in the event he were physically prevented from pegging off the 1,200 plots.
An epic battle ensued between President Kruger and Chief Justice
Kotzé. Kotzé denounced Kruger as an ‘oily old Chadband’ and defended
his attempts to establish judicial review of the constitutionality of legislation along the lines of what US Supreme Court Chief Justice Marshall
had done in the venerable precedent Marbury v. Madison.33 Kruger
32
33
United States v. Great Britain, 23 November 1923, VI RIAA 120.
US Supreme Court, 5 US (1 Cranch) 137 (1803), holding that to determine the
constitutional conformity of legislation is ‘the very essence of judicial duty’.
50
Three fundamental developments
countered by describing Kotzé as a lunatic fit for capture and incarceration in an asylum, asserting in his fourth inaugural address in 1889 that
‘the testing right [i.e. judicial review] is a principle of the devil’, and
advised other judges not to follow Kotzé in the devil’s way. In the end,
might prevailed and Kotzé was removed from office. A reconstituted and
more compliant High Court dismissed Brown’s motion to determine
damages on a technicality in 1898.34
Brown successfully appealed to his own government to espouse his
claim against Great Britain, as suzerain over the Republic. (The South
African Republic was conquered and annexed by Great Britain in 1902.)
After protracted negotiations had failed, the claim was disposed of by an
international arbitral tribunal in 1923.35 Like the claimants in the Loewen
case exactly eighty years later, Brown found to his mortification that his
claim for denial of justice was ‘undoubtedly’ well founded, but that it was
inadmissible because Great Britain was not liable for the wrongful acts of
the Republic with respect to a pending claim, as opposed to a liquidated
debt; the Attorney General of the Colony (as it had become) declared that
its courts were still open to Brown.
The tribunal’s finding of denial of justice is therefore dictum, but it is
still a leading case. (This comment, as we shall see in the section on
‘Fundamental breaches of due process’ in Chapter 7, is also likely to
apply in all respects to Loewen.) The arbitrators noted that Brown’s
claim had consistently been referred to as the ‘turning point’ in the
move to destroy the independence of the High Court. They further
found a ‘disposition to defeat Brown’s claim at any cost’, and that his
pursuit of damages was rejected, with an assessment of costs against him,
although the judgment in his favour had invited him so to proceed.
(Another frustrated applicant alleging ‘almost identical facts’ had been
allowed to proceed; the arbitrators had difficulty perceiving the possible
technical distinctions between the two cases.) Although Brown was given
leave to start a new action, he was advised by his counsel that the effect of
the new decision ‘was to throw him out of court and deprive him of the
benefit of his previous judgment’. A new suit would fly in the face of the
Volksraad’s edict that no compensation would be due, and the oath of
34
A fuller account of this episode was published by Professor John Dugard in ‘Chief
Justice versus President: Does the Ghost of Brown v. Leyds NO Still Haunt Our
Judges?’ De Rebus (September 1981), 421, where the author observes that arguably
‘this decision and its consequences have contributed more to current South African
judicial attitudes than any other episode in our legal history’.
35
23 November 1923, VI RIAA 120.
51
Denial of Justice in International Law
office now required of judges was to the effect that they would defer to the
legislature.
The arbitrators concluded that ‘if this proceeding were directed against
the South African Republic, we should have no difficulty awarding
damages on behalf of the claimant’. They noted that there were a number
of technical issues as to whether Brown ever held title to specific rights,
and that it was correct that ‘his legal remedies were not completely
exhausted’, but:
Notwithstanding these positions, all of which may, in our view, be conceded, we
are persuaded that on the whole case, giving proper weight to the cumulative
strength of the numerous steps taken by the Government of the South African
Republic with the obvious intent to defeat Brown’s claims, a definite denial of
justice took place. We can not overlook the broad facts in the history of this
controversy. All three branches of the Government conspired to ruin his enterprise. The Executive Department issued proclamations for which no warrant
could be found in the Constitution and laws of the country. The Volksraad
enacted legislation which, on its face, does violence to fundamental principles of
justice recognized in every enlightened community. The judiciary, at first recalcitrant, was at length reduced to submission and brought into line with a
determined policy of the Executive to reach the desired result regardless of
Constitutional guarantees and inhibitions . . . In the actual circumstances . . . we feel that the futility of further proceedings has been fully demonstrated, and that the advice of his counsel was amply justified. In the frequently
quoted language of an American Secretary of State: ‘A claimant in a foreign
State is not required to exhaust justice in such State when there is no justice to
exhaust’.36
Freeman concluded that the Robert E. Brown award ‘assimilated to a
denial of justice all the unlawful acts committed to the foreigner’s prejudice’. He went on to write:
It was the ‘improper deprivation of rights of a substantial character’ which, for
the arbitrators, constituted the denial of justice. Exactly how or by what State
organs that end was accomplished was apparently immaterial.
An identical position was taken in the El Triunfo Co case.37
Freeman’s failure to see the distinctions between the two cases is a
matter of considerable importance. In Robert E. Brown, there was massive
interference in a pending case, with the executive removal of the chief
36
Ibid. at p. 129; the US Secretary of State in question was Hamilton Fish; his often-cited
dictum appears in Moore, Digest, vol. VI, at p. 677.
37
Freeman at pp. 100–101.
52
Three fundamental developments
judge who had been instrumental in acknowledging Brown’s rights and
with the legislative reversal of a substantive rule which had already
become res judicata in Brown’s specific case. The implication of the two
other branches of government in the administration of justice was direct;
the difference with El Triunfo was manifest and fundamental.38
In sum, Fitzmaurice and Freeman’s conclusions to the effect that denial
of justice involves ‘some misconduct either on the part of the judiciary or
of organs acting in connection with the administration of justice to
aliens’39 appear irresistible. Indeed, Freeman quotes a Mexican scholar
and diplomat, writing at a time when that country’s experiences were not
such as to make it enthusiastic about any expansion of the delict, that
denial of justice may, in extreme cases, involve ‘administrative authorities’.40 Authors or precedents cited to the effect that denial of justice
relates only to actions or omissions of courts on closer analysis appear to
have been focused primarily on establishing the proposition that Hyde
and Nielsen were wrong,41 and that denial of justice must relate to
some dysfunction of the administration of justice as opposed to any and
all breaches of international law that might justify diplomatic intervention. In so doing, such authorities may, obiter dictum, have used loose
expressions. Once it is established that the relevant act or omission
is imputable to the state, it simply cannot matter whether the doors to
justice were blocked by executive fiat, legislative overreaching, or judicial
obstreperousness.
Extension of locus standi
The actors on the modern international stage are vastly more numerous than
in Freeman’s day. At the turn of the century, according to the 2001/2002
38
See also the five awards (Ruden, R. T. Johnson, Neptune, Ballistini, and Romberg) cited by
Eagleton, Responsibility of States, at p. 547, note 28, involving such executive acts as
orders forbidding the trial of suits against the treasury and irresistible interventions by a
provincial governor to prevent the hearing of a suit.
39
Freeman at p. 106, agreeing with Fitzmaurice, who referred, at p. 94, to ‘actions in or
concerning the administration of justice, whether on the part of the courts or of some other
organ of the state’ (emphasis in the original).
40
‘[A]ctos de autoridades administrativas, cuando éstas ejerzan funciones jurisdiccionales
con carácter definitivo y sin ulteriores recursos ante los Tribunales de Justicia’, Oscar
Rabasa, Responsabilidad Internacional del Estado con Referencia Especial a la Responsabilidad por
Denegación de Justicia ((Mexico: Imprenta de la Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores, 1933), at
p. 35, quoted in Freeman at p. 106, note 2).
41
See Note 22 of this chapter above.
53
Denial of Justice in International Law
Yearbook of International Organizations, there were nearly 1,000 international
intergovernmental organisations and ten times as many international
non-governmental organisations. These numbers do not include special
bodies created to implement treaties, or the myriad organisations, secular
and religious, of what one may call international civil society. Many such
organisations may claim both higher representational legitimacy and lawabiding credentials than an unfortunately high number of dysfunctional
national governments; indeed, the same may be said of some internationally active private for-profit corporations who believe they can point to an
unblemished record of respect for the interests of vast numbers of shareholders and employees, and generally for the rule of law.
Concomitantly, the international system has provided a number of fora
where parties other than states, including individuals, are able to raise
grievances based on violations of international law. This development is
premised on the need to give judicial standing to litigants denied international legal protection with respect to human rights, investments, or
the environment. The relevant international instruments are far too
numerous to mention exhaustively; suffice it to refer to the European
Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental
Freedoms – a true watershed – Article 34 of which provides that the
European Court of Human Rights:
may receive applications from any person, non-governmental organisation or
group of individuals claiming to be the victim of a violation by one of the High
Contracting Parties of the rights set forth in this Convention on the protocols
hereto. The High Contracting Parties undertake not to hinder in any way the
effective exercise of this right.
It would be even harder to provide an inventory of the scholarly commentary which has accompanied this development, although it seems
necessary and appropriate to single out International Law and Human Rights,
the highly influential monograph published by Sir Hersch Lauterpacht in
1950, the same year as the European Convention was opened for
signature.42
42
In the 9th edition of Oppenheim one finds the following succinct footnote: ‘The question
whether there could be any subjects of international law other than states was at one
time a matter of strenuous debate. In the first three editions of this work the view was
expressed that states only and exclusively are the subjects of international law. It is now
generally accepted that there are subjects other than states, and practice amply proves
this. One of the most important pioneers in getting this ‘‘modern’’ view accepted was
Sir Hersch Lauterpacht, the editor of the 8th ed of this vol’ (Oppenheim, vol. I, at p. 16,
note 1).
54
Three fundamental developments
In other words, this development is not recent. As the then Solicitor
General of Uganda wrote in 1968, after noting some ‘extreme expressions’ on the subject:
The position of the individual as a subject of international law has been greatly
obscured by a failure to distinguish between the recognition of rights enuring to the
benefit of the individual and the enforceability of those rights at his instance . . .
At the present stage in the development of international law, generally speaking, individuals lack the procedural capacity to espouse their claims before
international tribunals and such claims can be entertained only at the instance
of the state of which the individual is a national or in certain circumstances by the
international institution of which he is a servant. But it is now only ‘generally
speaking’ true to say that individuals lack procedural capacity to bring claims
before international tribunals, and that only states of which they are nationals
can espouse such claims. A characteristic trend of modern developments of
international law is the granting of procedural capacity to individuals for the
protection of certain well-defined rights.43
Nor is the notion that foreign investors may have direct access to
international tribunals a novelty. Substantive norms and procedural
mechanisms for the international protection of foreign investment were
actively considered in the 1950s, and gave rise to the so-called Abs–
Shawcross Draft.44 These initiatives were taken up at an intergovernmental level within the framework of the OECD, giving rise in 1967 to a
Draft Convention on the Protection of Foreign Property.45
Against this background, once-axiomatic declarations to the effect that
only states may be subjects of international law fall on modern ears like an
echo of an incomprehensible ancient dogma. Private parties are today
participants, to a greater or lesser degree, in the international legal
process.46
43
Nkmabo Murgerwa, ‘Subjects of International Law’, in Max Sørensen (ed.), Manual of
Public International Law (London: Macmillan, 1968), at pp. 265–266.
44
Draft Convention on Investments Abroad, (1960) 9 Journal of Public Law 115; see
G. Schwarzenberger, ‘The Abs–Shawcross Draft Convention on Investments
Abroad’, (1961) 14 Current Legal Problems 213.
45
(1968) 7 ILM 117.
46
International Law Commission (Dugard), First Report on Diplomatic Protection, UN
Doc. A/CN.4/506 (2000) at p. 4, para. 4(d), affirmed: ‘The work on diplomatic protection
should take into account the development of international law in increasing recognition
and protection of the rights of individuals and in providing them with more direct and
indirect access to international forums to enforce their rights.’ See Francisco Orrego
Vicuña, ‘Individuals and Non-State Entities before International Courts and Tribunals’,
in J. A. Frowein and R. Wolfrum (eds.), Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law (The
Hague: Kluwer, 2001), vol. V, at p. 53.
55
Denial of Justice in International Law
True, when in 2001 the ILC finally ended nearly half a century of
gestation and gave birth to the Articles on Responsibility of States for
Internationally Wrongful Acts, it did not describe how its prescriptions
might be invoked by claimants other than states. But this feature of the
ILC Articles is readily explained by the fact that the ILC consciously avoided
suggesting prescriptions of so-called primary rules. (Broadly, the ILC did not
seek to define the primary principles establishing wrongfulness, but the secondary rules of responsibility once the wrong has been established.) Since the extent
to which parties other than states may invoke international responsibility is a
function of the primary rule involved, the ILC understandably did not
enunciate a general rule of locus standi, but left the matter to lex specialis such
as human rights conventions or, in the case of investor protection, the more
than 2,000 bilateral treaties which establish international mechanisms for the
invocation by private parties of the responsibility of states.
Accordingly, Article 33(2) states that Part 2 of the ILC Articles (concerning
the content of the international responsibility of states) ‘is without prejudice to
any right, arising from the international responsibility of a State, which may
accrue directly to any person or entity other than a State’. Consistently with
this statement, the provisions of Part 2 do not identify the party to whom the
obligation is owed. Also relevant, in terms of respect for discrete treaty
mechanisms, is Article 55 of Part 4 (general provisions) which is entitled
‘Lex specialis’ and makes clear that the ILC Articles do not apply ‘where and to
the extent that . . . the implementation of the international responsibility of
the State [is] governed by special rules of international law’.
The developments described in this chapter alter immensely the legal
landscape in which Freeman and his contemporaries were writing. Yet even
in that period, which one might fix roughly as between the two World Wars,
there was already a rich body of decisions dealing with claims of denial of
justice. (Freeman’s table of cases included 457 entries.) It is important to
understand the contours of the delict as they had emerged in the 1930s, and
to see how they have been developed and clarified in the course of the
epochal expansion of the international community since then.
This objective explains the extensive reference to authors such as
Freeman, de Visscher and Fitzmaurice. For the rest, this study seeks less
to account for what others have written than to consider the thing itself.
56
4
The modern definition of denial of justice
Overview
We have seen that the concept of denial of justice was once often used as
the rhetorical excuse for interventions by foreign governments acting on
behalf of their nationals to obtain reparation for alleged violations of their
rights. The triggering event might be any action deemed to breach international
law, whether or not related to the administration of justice. Forcible
intervention was thus justified by the complaint that the initial wrong
had not been repaired by national judicial processes.
One consequence of this usage of the expression was that some scholars
concluded that it applied only to instances of refusal of redress, so that it
would cover failure or extreme delay in the hearing of a complaint, but
not cases of miscarriage of justice affecting defendants. If the latter were
international wrongs, it was said, they would have to be known by some
other appellation such as ‘manifest injustice’, because they were not
properly to be understood as justice denied, but as justice wrongly rendered.
To compound the confusion, some writers and indeed adjudicators
concluded that denial of justice could never be a primary wrong, but
could only be present when the initial wrong, whatever it may have been,
was followed by a failure to correct it. The ensuing habitual coupling of
denial of justice with every type of international wrong was doubtless an
even more serious consequence of the use of the expression denial of justice
to legitimise the use of force. The original wrong done to the defendant
was blended with the failure of national redress, and the two grievances
became the indistinct condition for ‘diplomatic’ intervention.
These mental constructs have long since been exposed as misleading
and unsound. One can of course agree that words should be taken to
57
Denial of Justice in International Law
mean anything at all. Even if one deems a tail to be a leg, however, dogs
will still have four legs. We could also agree that any leg should be
termed ‘a weight-bearing extremity’, but that would add nothing to our
ability to identify a dog. The unnecessary multiplication of formal
causes of action, depending on who has initiated the action, sows confusion. It makes life difficult for lawyers, adjudicators and negotiators of
the instruments of international law. So would insistence on the proposition that exactly the same facts that constitute miscarriage of justice,
such as the flat refusal to hear a litigant, give rise to one delict if they take
place in connection with attempts to redress an ‘original wrong’
(whether or not connected with the administration of justice), but
quite another if they are invoked as the ‘primary’ wrong. Above all,
these quibblings were connected with a preoccupation, namely the
justification for diplomatic intervention, which has to do with remedies
and not with the elements of responsibility.
These conceptual ambiguities were initially the handiwork of those
who were seeking to extend the protection of international law. They
undoubtedly included both idealists and opportunists. Whatever their
motivation, they were seen by weaker states as providing cover for
dubious unilateralism. And so the defenders of those states, which habitually found themselves debtors and respondents to claims of denial of
justice, continued to introduce qualifications of their own, equally productive of confusion.
Although all writers on the subject accept that a claim of denial of
justice is an international complaint which cannot be disposed of by the
very state whose conduct is in question, there was once a wave of
commentators seeking with all their might to restrict its definition. The
most extreme positions were taken by those who insisted that only a
refusal to consider a case could give rise to international responsibility.
Once a formal judgment was rendered, no matter how many years after
the petition, no matter how unfair the conduct of the trial, indeed no
matter how clear the proof of bias or even corruption, it would be an
affront to national sovereignty for international adjudicators to examine
the actions of the local judiciary. This extreme view would have turned
denial of justice into a shimmering mirage. It has no serious proponents in
modern international law. (As for the insult to national pride, such
emotive comments will always be voiced by the ignorant or the manipulative whenever they find international law to be ill suited to their
motives; international law is by definition and in its essence a restriction
on national prerogatives.)
58
The modern definition of denial of justice
A less extreme but in effect equally perverse limitation was the proposition that the expression denial of justice could be used only with
respect to the conduct of judicial officers of the state. The support for this
proposition is less extensive than some authors have supposed.1 Some
proponents of this theory were interested only in the a priori objective of
dismantling the international delict of denial of justice. They should be
disregarded. As for the others, an examination of their writings suggests
that they were primarily concerned with correcting the unacceptable
channelling of all international grievances into the delict of denial of
justice. In other words, their concern was to achieve agreement to the
effect that denial of justice is a meaningful concept only if it is understood
as relating to the administration of justice. Once that is established,
the issue is simply whether the wrongful acts or omissions are attributable
to the state or not. Unless one wishes to open the door to the evisceration of international law by political fiat, it matters not, as argued
in greater detail in the section on ‘Denial of justice by non-judicial
authority’ in Chapter 3, whether the internationally wrongful administration of justice is perpetuated by the executive, legislative or judicial
branches.
The difficult emergence of a general international standard
International law would not crumble with the disappearance of the
expression ‘denial of justice’. Yet if it did not exist it would have to be
invented in some other guise, and whatever concept were enlisted in its
place would share two of its features: (i) it would have to be expressed as an
abstraction2 and (ii) it could not be applied mechanically.
1
In particular, Cançado Trindade’s impressive list of authorities ostensibly favouring the
limitation of denial of justice ‘to wrong conduct of courts or judges’ – including
Borchard, Durand, Bevilaqua, Anzilotti, Strisower, Accioly, C. Rousseau, Rolin,
‘Oppenheim – Lauterpacht’, Brownlie, Kelsen, Castberg, Ago, Brierly – Cançado
Trindade, ‘Denial of Justice and its Relationship to Exhaustion of Local Remedies in
International Law’, (1978) 53 Philippine Law Journal 404, at p. 411, quickly dissolves into
a flood of qualifications and exceptions upon examination of the quoted works.
2
During the 1954 session of the Institut de Droit International, only a small minority of
the participants found merit in the prospect of defining denial of justice by enumeration
of instances; the majority favoured overarching formulae, (1954) 45 Annuaire de l’Institut
de droit international 97. Oliver J. Lissitzyn, ‘The Meaning of the Term Denial of Justice in
International Law’, (1936) 30 AJIL 632, at p. 644, on the other hand, favoured
avoidance of the term altogether because of its inconclusiveness, given that ‘particular
acts or omissions meant to be covered by it can be enumerated and defined expressly’.
59
Denial of Justice in International Law
If these two related propositions were not accepted, formalism would
rule; any state could avoid responsibility for the way its system of justice
treats foreigners simply by going through expedient motions.
True, by the study of treaties, precedents and doctrine international
adjudicators could seek to decide whether there has been an international
delict without using the particular abstraction denial of justice, but they
would still find themselves struggling with the task of finding meaningful
applications of other abstractions that seek to encapsulate an evolving
consensus as to the minimum international standard required of national
legal systems when they deal with the rights of foreigners. This is unavoidable due to the inexorable inclination of perpetrators of unfairness to
cloak their actions in the appearance of fairness.
Freeman gives an account of various tentative codifications which in
his day had sought to avoid what was viewed, not without reason, as a
fuzzy and controversial notion, unlikely in itself to yield predictability.
After noting that ‘vagueness is characteristic of growing, living branches
of legal science, and allows necessary leeway for the law to pass through its
formative periods’, he concluded:
the expression should not be tossed aside as incapable of useful service. It is true
that considerable controversy rages over its meaning. Yet an imposing body
of authority is gradually coming to recognize that its rightful province is synonymous with every failure on the part of the State to provide an adequate
judicial protection for the rights of aliens. And as such, ‘denial of justice’ merits
preservation.3
International law has already built on this conclusion. It can no longer be
seriously maintained that denial of justice means nothing but access to
formal adjudication, no matter how iniquitous; nor that state responsibility cannot attach to wrongful acts of the judiciary. And if a foreigner is
entitled to the protections of international law, the organs of a state
cannot have the last word when such entitlements are invoked.
Ignorance, bad faith and the outraged unreasoned rejection of criticism
will always be with us, but the controversy of Freeman’s day has abated.
The modern consensus is clear to the effect that the factual circumstances must be egregious if state responsibility is to arise on the grounds
of denial of justice. If a foreigner has been convicted of a crime by a jury of
five and complains that other courts empanel juries of nine for such cases,
there is little prospect of concluding that an international standard has
3
Freeman at pp. 182–183.
60
The modern definition of denial of justice
been violated. On the other hand, if jury members had been allowed to
hear the prosecution but not the defence, there can be little doubt that a
denial of justice has occurred. International adjudicators do not require
an explicit rule or an exactly matching precedent to reach a conclusion in
either case. The organs of the state do not necessarily defy the fundaments
of a fair legal process by the use of a smaller jury (indeed there is no
international standard to the effect that facts must be tried by a jury, even
in criminal law). But they do so if they silence an accused.
The indispensable line between fundamental violations and others is
easy to draw in the instances just imagined, but other cases are less clearcut.
What if the defence is given only thirty minutes to answer the prosecution’s
hour-long summation? How about five minutes? What if the jury includes
only members of a particular religion which is alleged to be hostile to
the complaining foreigner, or gives greater weight to the testimony of
coreligionists, or to men as opposed to women? What if the judgment
looks impressively well-reasoned and balanced, but the trial record shows
that important elements of the foreigner’s evidence were excluded?
Most difficult questions are matters of degree. Sometimes they are given
weight only when there is an accumulation of disturbing evidence. These
concrete questions are at the heart of the matter, and merit reflection.
A less worthwhile inquiry concerns the taxonomy of state organs to be
acknowledged as dispensing justice, or the types of interactions with
authorities to be acknowledged as part of the processes of justice. For
example, it might be argued that a denial of justice can occur only if an
alien is thwarted in his attempt to initiate a suit to protect his rights, but that
the expression is inapposite if he is the victim of a miscarriage of justice as a
defendant; since in the latter case he is by definition before the court, there is
no denial of justice but rather something that must find another name, such
as ‘manifest or notorious injustice’. Or it may be posited that internationally
unacceptable conditions of arrest or detention are international wrongs of
a genus different from denial of justice stricto sensu because they occur, as it
were, in connection with judicial proceedings rather than as a part of them,
and involve the conduct of non-judicial officers. Indeed scholars in times
past found it necessary to debate such matters.
The phrase ‘denial of justice’, no matter how elaborately defined, will
never yield instant clarity as to how actual cases are to be decided in a
complex and untidy world. It seems futile to develop refined theories
about what conduct is encompassed by a given expression of such elasticity. To some extent the debate is one of nomenclature; it does not
concern the existence of an international delict, but what to call it.
61
Denial of Justice in International Law
The preferred solution is doubtless to adopt a broad definition that
encompasses all aspects of the judicial process. Certainly a detainee held
for years without a trial would find it difficult to understand why he is not
the victim of a denial of justice simply because no judge ordered his
incarceration and the opening gavel for his trial has not yet been brought
down. This study proceeds on the premise of a definition such as the one
proposed in Chapter 1: the delict of denial of justice occurs when the
instrumentalities of a state purport to administer justice to aliens in a
fundamentally unfair manner. The interesting debate is not whether
international delicts are placed in the right category, but whether they
are delicts in the first place.
Grotius conceived two types of denial of justice: (i) where ‘a judgment
cannot be obtained against a criminal or a debtor within a reasonable
time’ and (ii) where ‘in a very clear case judgment has been rendered in a
way manifestly contrary to law’.4 There are two difficulties with this
exposition which have created much confusion over the centuries.
The first problem is that Grotius focused on cases where the complainant was frustrated as a plaintiff. This conception of the issue has caused
some among the successive generations of scholars to view denial of
justice exclusively as a matter of thwarted redress. Well into the twentieth
century, voices were heard to the effect that denial of justice was
‘restricted to those cases in which the alien appears as plaintiff ’.5 Some
tribunals reasoned that there must have been some ‘original’ injustice
with respect to which a court thereafter denied redress.6 But of course a
foreigner may suffer from a miscarriage of justice as a defendant; the
Loewen case is an obvious example. To maintain that denial of justice
comes into play with respect to only the wrongful treatment of grievances
therefore made it necessary to speak of ‘manifest injustice’ as a category
additional to that of denial of justice. Moreover, this approach suggested
that the claimant to whom justice was denied must have been right with
respect to his grievance, which logically leads to the unacceptable
4
Hugo Grotius, De Jure Belli ac Pacis libri tres (Oxford: Clarendon, 1925), book III, chap. 2.
Clyde Eagleton, ‘Denial of Justice in International Law’, (1928) 22 AJIL 538, at p. 553.
Contra Freeman at p. 151 et seq.; de Visscher at p. 393; Fitzmaurice at p. 105.
6
In the course of colloquy with counsel in the Cayuga Indians case, Arbitrator Pound said:
‘First there is an injustice antecedent to the denial, and then the denial after it’ (US v.
Great Britain; Fred K. Nielsen, American and British Claims Arbitration under the Special
Agreement of August 18, 1910, at p. 258). This phrase, pithy but misleading (see
Freeman’s comment at p. 155, n. 1), was cited in the important Chattin case in support
of the unfortunate conception that the expression ‘denial of justice’ is inappropriate
when ‘the courts themselves did injustice’, IV RIAA 282, at p. 286.
5
62
The modern definition of denial of justice
conclusion that one is entitled to a proper hearing only if one’s case is
good. Since the substance of the delict of denial of justice is undistinguishable from that of ‘manifest injustice’ as that phrase was used to cover the
special pseudo-category of judicial wrongdoing independent of antecedent injustice, the irresistibly better view is to consider, simply and
naturally, that denial of justice covers all situations where a foreigner
has been deprived of a proper judicial process, whether he is seeking to
establish or to preserve legal interests.
Fitzmaurice archly dismissed this as ‘a particularly barren distinction of
no practical utility’, and moreover one of doubtful theoretical validity.7
The question, he observed, is whether ‘a wrong similar in every respect’
must be given ‘some other name’ because it was committed against an
alien defendant who is not seeking redress for a prior wrong but is seeking
to resist an effort to obtain redress against himself. His analysis in response
to this question merits full quotation:
The point is usually obscured by the fact that in nearly all cases an appeal lies,
and owing to the familiar rule that all appeals must be exhausted before formal
diplomatic intervention can take place, such intervention can, in fact, when the
time comes, usually be based on a failure to redress a previous wrong, i.e. in the
case of a defendant, on the improper failure, due e.g. to a lack of impartiality, on
the part of a higher court to redress the injury caused by a wrong judgment in a
lower one. But it is possible to conceive a case where this would not be so.
Imagine that A sues B, a foreigner, for money lent. The court quite properly
decides in favour of B, it being clear that he never borrowed the money.
A appeals. The court of appeal confirms the judgment. A appeals to the final
court of appeal. This court, being clearly prejudiced against B on the ground that
he is a foreigner, reverses the previous judgments, and condemns him to pay.
Most people would say that this would constitute a denial of justice. Yet it would
not consist in a failure to redress a previous injury done to B. On the contrary it
would constitute an original wrong done to him.
This instance brings into glaring relief the unreality of the distinction between
a denial of justice committed by the courts, and an original wrong or injustice
committed by them. The distinction may be sound in theory, but it is unreal in
practice. In either case there is a failure on the part of the courts to do justice, and
in either case there is a failure to render to the injured party the justice which he
had the right to expect in a court of law; in other words a denial to him of justice –
be he plaintiff or defendant. But the distinction, even if it be valid in pure theory,
becomes still more unreal when considered in connexion with the by no means
unusual class of case, to which attention has already been drawn, where the
7
Fitzmaurice at p. 105.
63
Denial of Justice in International Law
parties before the court are neither plaintiff nor defendant, but as it were both –
where each seeks to establish a right and to contest the other’s right but without
alleging any actual injury. If in such a case a court, e.g. the highest court of
appeal, delivers a judgment against one of the parties, a foreigner, which
obviously constitutes a flagrant piece of dishonesty, clearly involving the international responsibility of the state, can it be said with any real justification that
the party in question has not suffered a denial of justice because there has been no
failure by the court to redress a prior wrong (when none was asserted) and that
the wrong committed by the court must be called by some other name?
The conclusion to be drawn seems to be that, at any rate for all practical
purposes, every injury involving the responsibility of the state committed by a
court or judge acting officially, or alternatively every such injury committed by
any organ of the government in its official capacity in connexion with the
administration of justice, constitutes and can properly be styled a denial of
justice, whether it consists in a failure to redress a prior wrong, or in an original
wrong committed by the court or other organ itself.8
Fiztmaurice found support for this view in the following passage from
Borchard:
Whether it is technically possible or desirable to make the distinction where
courts are involved between primary and secondary injuries, for example,
whether it is practical to say where a mob or the executive controls the courts
in a case where the alien is a defendant, that a denial of justice has not occurred,
but only an ‘unjust judgment’, seems rather doubtful. Foreign Offices would
probably not make the distinction, nor have international tribunals or writers
generally.9
The expression ‘manifest injustice’ of itself is an unhappy one, because
it is irremediably ambiguous; it could refer to either an unjust judgment
or an unfair trial. This ambiguity is precisely the second difficulty with the
Grotian formulation. A judgment ‘rendered in a way manifestly contrary
to law’ could be vitiated either because the court disregarded the procedural code or because it misapplied principles of liability. If anything is
clear about the international law of denial of justice, it is that it does not
concern itself with bare errors of substance. Fitzmaurice wrote that it
‘hardly seems necessary to give authority for the proposition that mere
error of fact or mere error in the interpretation of the national law does
8
9
Ibid. at pp. 107–109.
(1929) I Zeitschrift für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht 223, quoted in
Fitzmaurice, at p. 109.
64
The modern definition of denial of justice
not per se involve responsibility’, but went on to quote eloquent and
categorical passages to that effect from four awards.10
Grotius’ discussion of this subject was incidental; he was not proposing
a new doctrine to reflect the limits of the territorial prerogatives of
emerging nation states, but simply considering all grievances that might
be said to legitimise war. The true intellectual father of denial of justice
was Vattel, who in 1758 proposed a systematic approach to the illegitimate refusal of justice under three heads:
*
*
*
not admitting foreigners to establish their rights before the ordinary
courts,
delays which are ruinous or otherwise equivalent to refusal,
judgments ‘manifestly unjust and one-sided’.11
Two centuries of debate focused on the third category. (No serious
international lawyer contests either of the first two.) That phrase – ‘manifestly unjust and one-sided’ – is the heart of this study. Much may lie in the
two adjectives. Unjust is not enough, the conjunctive and signifies that
something more is required. One-sided then opens the door to the manner
in which the process was conducted; all fundamental rules of procedure are,
after all, intended to ensure the absence of partiality. The proper reaction
to discrimination, fraud, bias, malice or harassment, abuse of form, or
arbitrariness should not engender controversy in principle; they are proscribed. But to anticipate the greatest difficulty of our subject, it should
follow that gross or notorious injustice – whatever the words used – is not a
denial of justice merely because the conclusion appears to be demonstrably
wrong in substance; it must impel the adjudicator to conclude that it could
not have been reached by an impartial judicial body worthy of that name.
(Thus the unexplained disregard of a century of unbroken jurisprudence
might be viewed with suspicion if it happens to benefit powerful local
interests arrayed against a politically controversial foreigner.12)
10
12
Ibid. at p. 111, note 1. 11 Vattel, Book II, at para. 350.
As Spain’s Counter-Memorial in Barcelona Traction put it, a state is liable for erroneous
judicial decisions, or mal jugé, only if it is found that the relevant courts exhibited some
degree of ‘bad faith or discriminatory intention’. Quoted in Eduardo Jiménez de
Aréchaga, ‘International Responsibility of States for Acts of the Judiciary’, in
W. G. Friedmann, L. Henkin and O. J. Lissitzyn (eds.), Transnational Law in a Changing
Society – Essays in Honor of Philip C. Jessup (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972),
171, at p. 179. An example of a legal basis for a national judgment so outlandish that it
is rejected by the international tribunal is the peculiar notion of res judicata in the Idler
case, discussed in the section on ‘Gross incompetence’ in Chapter 7.
65
Denial of Justice in International Law
Freeman quoted De Visscher’s formulation of denial of justice, namely:
toute défaillance dans l’organisation ou dans l’exercice de la fonction juridictionnelle qui implique manquement de l’Etat à son devoir international de
protection judiciaire des étrangers,13
and offered the observation that ‘it may well be wondered whether any
future jurist will be able to improve upon’14 that definition. One might
object that the word ‘definition’ does not easily apply to a sentence which
includes the unexplained words ‘failure’, ‘duty’, and ‘judicial protection’.
Certainly Freeman’s own attempt, offered almost apologetically in
light of the author’s admiration for de Visscher’s phrase, can be criticised
on the same basis. He wrote:
If there is anything even remotely approaching a tendency toward a uniform
definition in recent doctrinal utterances, it is to apply the phrase ‘denial of justice’
to all unlawful acts or omissions engaging the State’s responsibility in connection
with the entire process of administering justice to aliens.15
This is circular. No insight is required to understand that ‘unlawful acts or
omissions’ give rise to responsibility. What we want to know is precisely
what makes them unlawful. All we can say, as we try to apprehend the sense of
such oft-recurring intensifiers as shocking, or surprising, is that the issue is
one of fundamental unfairness. Since the days of de Visscher and Freeman,
we have learned to live with inherently elastic concepts relating to the
international legitimacy of national judicial processes. The fundamental
conventions of human rights which have come into being since then have
struggled to do better than to refer to abstractions such as fair trials.16 Yet
13
In de Visscher at p. 390, quoted in Freeman at p. 162 (‘any shortcoming in the
organisation or exercise of the jurisdictional function which involves a failure of the
state to live up to its international duty of extending judicial protection to foreigners’).
14
Freeman at p. 163. 15 Ibid. at p. 161.
16
Although one must recognise the contribution of the United Nations on the specific
issue of the independence of the judiciary and of lawyers: see, e.g., Commission on
Human Rights resolution 2003/43 ‘Independence and impartiality of the judiciary,
jurors and assessors and the independence of lawyers’, UN Doc. E/CN.4/2003/L.11/
Add.4, at p. 57; Basic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary, adopted by the
Seventh United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of
Offenders, UN Doc. A/CONF.121/22/Rev.1, at p. 59; Basic Principles on the Role of
Lawyers, adopted by the Eighth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime
and the Treatment of Offenders, UN Doc. A/CONF.144/28/Rev.1, at p. 118; and
General Assembly resolutions A/RES/43/153, adopted 8 December 1988, A/RES/
48/137, adopted 20 December 1993, and A/RES/58/183, adopted 18 March 2004,
all on ‘Human rights in the administration of justice’.
66
The modern definition of denial of justice
political consensus has been reached as to the articulation of those general
principles, and international adjudicators have been able to give them life.
An international legal culture emerges that enables us to perceive in concreto
the boundaries of national discretion – with more or less certainty, as
always in the life of the law, the closer we find ourselves to the boundary
beyond which the international delict arises. The situation is the same
with respect to denial of justice. And so perhaps a phrase will do, such as
Irizarry y Puente’s succinct formulation: ‘the international obligation of
the state not to administer justice in a notoriously unjust manner’.17 As
seen above, unfair might be preferable to unjust, because it denotes not just
error, but fault. At any rate, and whatever assistance may be provided by
precedents and by crystallising general principles relating to due process,
the perception of what is fundamentally unfair will, in the difficult cases,
ultimately be a matter of subjective discernment.
Before concluding these reflections on the contemporary standard, it
seems appropriate to suggest that it is time to put aside the confrontational
vocabulary which was perhaps unavoidable in the convulsive period of
decolonialisation which gathered momentum in the wake of the Second
World War and culminated in the watershed year of 1960. One can
understand how Judge Guha Roy could have written in 1961 that the
protection of rights obtained in a colonial regime ‘cannot for obvious
reasons carry with them in the mind of the victims of that abuse anything
like the sanctity the holders of those rights and interests may and do attach
to them’, and that universal adherence cannot be expected to accrue to a
law of state responsibility which ‘protects an unjustified status quo or, to
put it more bluntly, makes itself a handmaid of power in the preservation
of its spoils’.18 But we are no longer talking about the perpetuation of
rights originating in King Leopold’s shameful private domain, or handed
down from colonial concessions. Half a century has gone by, and we are
now concerned with the reliability of legal rights and interests defined by
autonomous governments who have encouraged foreigners to rely on
them. To deny the capacity of sovereign states to generate international
acquired rights is to condemn them to suffer a handicap tantamount to
perpetual credit-unworthiness. It is to deprive them of the most powerful
of tools in the vast process of economic development.
17
J. Irizarry y Puente, ‘The Concept of ‘Denial of Justice’ in Latin America’, (1944) 43
Michigan Law Review 383, at p. 406 (emphasis omitted).
18
S. N. Guha Roy, ‘Is the Law of Responsibility of States for Injuries to Aliens a Part of
Universal International Law?’ (1961) 55 AJIL 866.
67
Denial of Justice in International Law
An evolving standard
One of the insights of the modern conception of denial of justice is that its
evolution is bound to continue. A good and uncontroversial illustration of
this perception is provided by Mondev.
As the arbitral tribunal found,19 the principal admissible issue in the case
concerned ‘the content of the notion of denial of justice’ under the international law minimum standard of treatment of aliens (as that is applicable
under NAFTA). Referring with approval to the award in Pope & Talbot,20
the tribunal found that this was an evolutionary standard to be informed by
practice, including treaties. In its intervention as a third-party signatory of
NAFTA, Mexico noted that the customary international law standard
‘is relative and that conduct which may not have violated international
law [in] the 1920s may very well be seen to offend internationally accepted
principles today’; the core idea is that ‘of arbitrary action being substituted
for the rule of law’.21 For its part, Canada in its intervention noted that its
‘position has always been that customary international law can evolve over
time, but that the threshold for finding violation of the minimum standard
of treatment is still high’.22 Canada referred to the conception of customary
international law articulated by the Claimants Commissions of the interwar years, notably that of the Mexican Claims Commission in the Neer case
which found a requirement that, for there to be a breach of international
law, ‘the treatment of an alien . . . should amount to an outrage, to bad
faith, to wilful neglect of duty, or to an insufficiency of governmental action
so far short of international standards that every reasonable and impartial
man would readily recognize its insufficiency’.23
In oral argument, the respondent United States itself acknowledged
that ‘like all customary international law, the international minimum
standard has evolved and can evolve’.24
The Mondev tribunal immediately noted that cases like Neer did not
involve the treatment of foreign investment, but rather the physical safety
of aliens. Neer himself had been killed by armed men who were not
alleged to have been carrying out government instructions. The complaint was rather that the authorities were lax in their investigation and
19
Mondev at para. 99.
Ibid. at para. 105, Pope & Talbot Inc. v. Canada, award on damages, 31 May 2002,
7 ICSID Reports 148, at para. 59 (Greenberg, Belman, Dervaird (presiding)).
21
Mondev at para. 108. 22 Ibid. at para. 109.
23
L. F. H. Neer and Pauline Neer (US v. Mexico), 15 October 1926, IV RIAA 60, at pp. 61–62.
24
Mondev at para. 124.
20
68
The modern definition of denial of justice
pursuit. The Mondev tribunal was unwilling to assume that the protection
of foreign investment in treaties like NAFTA was ‘confined to the Neer
standard of outrageous treatment’.25 It also noted that:
To the modern eye, what is unfair or inequitable need not equate with the
outrageous or the egregious. In particular, a State may treat a foreign investment
unfairly and inequitably without necessarily acting in bad faith . . . the content of
the minimum standard today cannot be limited to the content of customary
international law as recognised in arbitral decisions in the 1920s.26
In an oft-quoted sentence, it added:
A judgment of what is fair and equitable cannot be reached in the abstract; it
must depend on the facts of the particular case.27
This sentence was qualified by the consideration that an arbitral tribunal
‘may not simply adopt its own idiosyncratic standard of what is ‘fair’ or
‘equitable’, without reference to established sources of law’.28
Relationship with specific rights created by international law
If a bilateral treaty requires the authorities of one state to notify the consular
authorities of the other state within seven days of its indictment of any
national of the latter for a capital crime, a treaty violation will be extant on
the eighth day of an unnotified indictment. Such a violation of international
law clearly arises in connection with the administration of justice, but it is
not necessarily a denial of justice. The national authorities have breached a
specific international engagement which creates a constraint on the administration of justice, but that does not mean that it constitutes a breach of
general principles of law. True, general principles of international law are
not static, and may come to embrace material provisions of treaties provided that the latter reflect sufficiently broad and constant state practice.
A single treaty, however, is most unlikely to create a general principle of law
and thus does not establish criteria of denial of justice.
So too international awards create obligations which may establish constraints on national legal systems. That does not mean that refusal to abide by
such awards constitutes a denial of justice. The well-known Martini case of
193029 illustrates a type of recurring confusion in this regard. Rendered by a
tribunal presided by Östen Undén, a former Swedish Minister of Foreign
25
28
Ibid. at para. 115.
Ibid. at para. 119.
26
29
Ibid. at paras. 116 and 123. 27 Ibid. at para. 118.
Italy v. Venezuela, 3 May 1930, II RIAA 975.
69
Denial of Justice in International Law
Affairs, this award observed that a prior, related award, issued in 190430
and finding the state liable for certain illegal acts causing damage to a railroad
and mining enterprise, constituted an international obligation for Venezuela.
It held accordingly that a subsequent Venezuelan judgment contradicting
the findings of that award constituted a ‘manifest injustice’ under the terms of
a new arbitration agreement entered into by Italy and Venezuela. The
‘manifest injustice’ standard had been imposed on the tribunal by the
arbitration agreement as an issue it was mandated to decide; ‘manifest
injustice’ is of course one way of characterising a so-called substantive denial
of justice. But this was not denial of justice; it was the violation of an
international obligation to respect the prior arbitral award as a res judicata.
In Feldman v. Mexico,31 the Government of Mexico conceded that the
arbitral tribunal could find that a Mexican law violated the relevant treaty
(the North American Free Trade Agreement) even if the Mexican courts
upheld the national law in question; the arbitrators put the matter
squarely as follows: ‘this Tribunal is not bound by a decision of a local
court if that decision violates international law’.32 In Himpurna v. Indonesia,
the arbitral tribunal rejected the proposition advanced by the respondent
state to the effect that the arbitrators would not have the authority ‘to
consider whether there has been a violation of international law – which is
part of the law of Indonesia – if such consideration might lead to disregard
of an Indonesian court decision’.33
This concept may be usefully examined by reference to Article 2(3)(a) of
the US/Bahrain Treaty concerning the Encouragement and Reciprocal
Protection of Investment,34 which provides that:
Each Party shall at all times accord to covered investments fair and equitable
treatment and full protection and security, and shall in no case accord treatment
less favorable than that required by international law.
In her letter to the President recommending the Treaty, the US
Secretary of State noted that in addition to the explicit reference to ‘fair
and equitable treatment’ and ‘full protection and security’:
30
Italy v. Venezuela, 8 July 1904, X RIAA 644.
Award, 16 December 2002, 7 ICSID Reports 341 (Covarrubias Bravo, Gantz,
Kerameus (presiding)).
32
Ibid. at para. 140.
33
Himpurna California Energy Ltd v. Indonesia, interim award, 26 September 1999, (2000)
XXV ICCA Yearbook Commercial Arbitration 109 (de Fina, Abdurrasyid, Paulsson
(presiding)), at p. 181.
34
Signed on 29 September 1999, (2000) 39 ILM 252.
31
70
The modern definition of denial of justice
The general reference to international law also implicitly incorporates the
fundamental rules of customary international law regarding the treatment of
foreign investment. 35
Such a provision naturally opens the door to liability, as found by an
international tribunal, for denial of justice as a ‘fundamental rule of
customary international law’. But denial of justice is not the only rule of
international law. If other rules are disregarded by national courts to the
detriment of an alien entitled to rely on this provision, the judgment is not
compliant with international law and should properly be disregarded by
an international tribunal competent to apply the treaty. But that does not
mean that there has been a denial of justice.
This is an area where it is difficult to agree with Freeman, who was
either wrong or unhelpfully ambiguous when he wrote that denial of
justice ‘in the international sphere’ is ‘designed . . . to guarantee and
safeguard the rights of aliens. It should therefore be found necessary to
modify the traditional procedural definition.’36 In his view, the ‘obligations implicit in the concept of denial of justice’ extend beyond ‘the
procedural operation of the judicial mechanism’ to:
embrace the substantive treatment which must be accorded to aliens by the
courts or whatever other organs the State may have charged with the function of
dispensing justice. 37
Was Freeman postulating that the breach of international law should be
deemed to be a denial of justice whenever it is done by judicial authorities?
That seems to be the case, for it is difficult to see why he would otherwise be
propounding an extension of the rule. Yet it is impossible, without ignoring
the natural meaning of words, to see what this had to do with denial of
justice. As Fitzmaurice had written only a few years before:
the judgments of municipal courts applying international law will, if they misapply international law, ipso facto involve the responsibility of the state (at any rate
if acted upon) even though rendered in perfect good faith by an honest and
competent court. 38
And Jiménez de Aréchaga put his finger on the problems when he
wrote, thirty years on, that:
35
Lucy Reed, Jan Paulsson and Nigel Blackaby, Guide to ICSID Arbitration (The Hague:
Kluwer, 2004), at p. 179.
36
Freeman at p. 178. 37 Ibid. at p. 51. 38 Fitzmaurice at p. 110.
71
Denial of Justice in International Law
the obvious objection is that denial of justice and State responsibility are not
co-extensive expressions, and that State responsibility for acts of the Judiciary
does not exhaust itself in the concept of denial of justice. 39
This objection is clearly well founded. A court which refuses to comply
with a treaty obligation to dispense with bonds as cautio adjudicatum solvi will
by definition violate an international obligation, but it is not a denial of
justice – unless the bond is unreasonable in amount, or discriminatory.
A significant theoretical weakness of de Visscher’s important Course at
the Hague Academy is to be found in his unsuccessful attempt to clarify
the debate as to the circumstances under which the substance of a
national judgment may be challenged internationally. He thought that
the contours of the problem could be better understood if one distinguished instances in which the state had guaranteed predetermined
judicial outcome from situations where there was no such guarantee.
The first hypothesis, according to de Visscher, involved such undertakings as the non-requirement of a bond as security for costs or the duty to
respect an arbitral award duly rendered in accordance with an international agreement.40
This construction is of no assistance, for the simple reason that a
violation of an independent international obligation, whether by a court
or any other organ of the state, is irrelevant to the discussion of denial of
justice. A national court judgment violative of international law does not
pose any conceptual difficulty. There is no need to find any exacerbated
error, contaminated by bad faith or by gross incompetence. There is no
presumption of compliance with international law. A simple error suffices. A simple difference of opinion on the part of the international
tribunal is enough; it has plenary powers to rule on the alleged international wrong as it sees fit.
In other words, the difficult hypothesis is the only hypothesis we must
wrestle with in connection with denial of justice. What is the dividing line
between what the Senate of Hamburg, in Yuille, Shortridge and Co., referred
to as ‘failure of justness’ and ‘total absence of justice’? De Visscher
suggested the following:
39
Jiménez de Aréchaga, ‘International Responsibility’ in M. Sørensen (ed.), Manual of
Public International Law (London: Macmillan, 1968), at p. 555.
40
De Visscher referred, at p. 402, to the Martini case, which, as seen, involved the
rejection of an award by the Venezuelan courts, leading to a further international
arbitration against that state.
72
The modern definition of denial of justice
In international relations, a decision manifestly rendered against all justice may
no longer be considered as a work of justice. The protection of the foreigner by
the internal procedures has proved itself to be ineffective. Under the appearances
of legality, the international duty of protections is violated; recourse to the
international forum is open. 41
In considering the egregiousness of the wrongfulness of a national
judgment applying national law, de Visscher observed that international
arbitrators had on occasion deduced ‘manifest injustice’ from extrinsic
circumstances such as pressure or corruption affecting the judges, or, by
reference to the Robert E. Brown award, evidence of collusion between the
legislature, the government and the judiciary. He concluded, however,
that in the great majority of cases the judgment itself furnishes the éléments
d’appréciation which might lead to the conclusion that it was motivated by
bias against the foreigner reflected in the ‘extreme defectiveness of its
reasoning’.42
No responsibility for misapplication of national law
The general rule is that the final word as to the meaning of national law
should be left with the national judiciary. Vattel’s admonition remains
pertinent:
In all cases open to doubt a sovereign should not entertain the complaints of his
subjects against a foreign tribunal nor undertake to exempt them from the effect
of a decision rendered in due form, for by doing so he would give rise to continual
disturbances.43
As seen above, Fitzmaurice wrote in 1932 that it hardly seemed
necessary to cite authority to the effect that ‘mere error in the interpretation of the national law does not per se involve responsibility’.44 We may
indeed refer to this proposition as the general rule. De Visscher put it as
follows:
The mere violation of internal law may never justify an international claim based
on denial of justice. It may be that the defectiveness of internal law, the refusal to
apply it, or its wrongful application by judges, constitute elements of proof of a
denial of justice, in the international understanding of the expression; but in and
of themselves they never constitute this denial. 45
41
44
Ibid. at p. 404. 42 Ibid. at p. 407. 43 Vattel, vol. II, at para. 350.
Fitzmaurice at p. 111, note 1. 45 De Visscher at p. 376.
73
Denial of Justice in International Law
In sum:
Errare humanum est: error in good faith excludes responsibility. 46
The general rule may be illustrated by Denham,47 which involved an
inheritance dispute between a widow and another woman, Andrea
Gonzalez, by whom the widow’s late husband had had five children.
These children would not, under Panamanian law, have had a share in
the estate without a will. Their mother presented for probate a will which
purported to give her children a greater interest in the estate than that
which Panamanian law would have granted to the widow in the absence
of a will. The document was drawn up in dubious circumstances as
Mr Denham lay dying, and his widow expressed her intention to
challenge it. To avoid litigation, the two women decided to reach an
accommodation by which the estate was divided equitably between the
deceased’s legitimate and illegitimate descendants. The controversial will
was abandoned, and the settlement was judicially approved as the basis
for a decree determining the succession.
Two years later, Sra Gonzalez brought suit to have the settlement
agreement set aside and the estate redistributed in accordance with the
will she had originally presented. She argued that the will would have
given her children more than they obtained under the settlement, and
that she had not had the right, under Panamanian law, to compromise
the rights of minors without the approval of the court.
The Panamanian court held in favour of Sra Gonzalez’s children,
stating that she had:
disposed gratuitously of part of the property which belonged to them by law,
according to the testator’s order, without having the legal authorization
to do so.
The Panamanian Supreme Court upheld this judgment, stating in
part that the minors ‘had been deprived of a great part of their
patrimony . . . without complying with tutelary formality’.
The American Agency brought proceedings on behalf of Mrs Denham,
alleging a denial of justice in that the courts had made unjustified
assumptions of non-existing facts, namely (a) that there was a valid
will, and, (b) at any rate, it was untrue that there had been a failure to
46
47
Ibid. at p. 382.
Lettie Charlotte Denham & Frank Parlin Denham (US v. Panama), 27 June 1933, VI
RIAA 334.
74
The modern definition of denial of justice
comply with formalities; a court decree had given effect to the settlement agreement insofar as it affected the minors, and Article 1501 of
the Civil Code did not invalidate this disposition, since it provided
only that no effect shall be given to a mother’s compromise with
respect to the rights of children under her tutelage ‘without judicial
authorisation’.
The Commission rejected the American complaint, finding ‘no evidence of any manifest violation of law or of manifest bad faith application
of law or in weighing the evidence filed by the parties’.
What needs to be stressed is that the Commission refused to substitute
its judgment for that of the Panamanian courts. The case thus illustrates
the powerful general rule that the final interpretation of a municipal law
should be left to the municipal judiciary.
The Croft arbitration between the United Kingdom and Portugal48 also
illustrates the firmness of the general rule. The British claimants in that
case had certain interests in a gift estate. In order to establish those
interests, a certain type of registration, known as insinuation, was required.
The claimants had sought to obtain that registration, but their application
was dismissed by a judgment which held it to be premature, and advised
its presentation upon the death of the donor. When the Crofts ultimately
returned to do so, the relevant Portuguese officials refused to recognise
the prior judgment. The claimants objected that this action violated the
law governing registration and the rights recognised by the earlier judgment. Acting as arbitrator, the Senate of Hamburg held that even if the
refusal had been wrongful, there was no violation of the law of nations as
the case did not fall under any of the three types of denial of justice
enumerated by Vattel (no access to a forum, excessive delay, or a ‘manifestly unjust and partial decision’).
Yuille, Shortridge & Co. was another claim brought to arbitration before
the Hamburg Senate by the UK against Portugal.49 The problem was
that a Portuguese court of appeal had rather astonishingly held that the
claimant, a corporate entity, was liable for the personal debts of one of its
shareholders. The UK argued that the judgment was an egregious injustice. Once again relying on Vattel, the arbitral tribunal disagreed, holding
that there was:
48
49
7 February 1856, de Lapradelle and Politis, Recueil, vol. II, at p. 22.
21 October 1861, ibid. at p. 101.
75
Denial of Justice in International Law
neither denial of justice nor a simulacrum of form, because it was the Court of
Appeal which had judged on the basis of legal principles, however poorly applied
to the facts.50
Freeman criticised this arbitral decision on the grounds that it seemed to
leave no international remedy against the substance of a judgment applying national law – ‘no matter how erroneous, manifestly unjust or both’.
He criticised the arbitral tribunal for interpreting Vattel’s ‘manifest injustice’
in an overly restrictive way, and wrote that ‘one may well conjecture
whether the point at issue in the Yuille, Shortridge & Co. case would not
have been decided differently if presented today’.51
Since the claim was successful on another ground, the arbitral tribunal’s comments were obiter dictum. There may have been more to the
matter than can be gleaned from the available summary. Indeed the
Hamburg Senate may have been careless in making this observation.
That does not mean, however, that Freeman is necessarily right in
suggesting that the conclusion should have been an exception to the
general rule. A better approach would be to test the Portuguese judgment
against a standard of gross incompetence, and to have the claim fail or
succeed depending on whether the record justified the conclusion that on
that basis it could be considered procedural denial of justice.
The general principle that misapplication of national law is not a denial
of justice has been confirmed in more recent jurisprudence.
Mondev involved claims against the United States arising out of a
decision rendered by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (the
SJC), as well as the US Supreme Court’s decision to refuse to hear an
appeal from that decision. Through a US subsidiary, Mondev had
entered into a commercial real estate development contract with the
City of Boston and the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA). The
relevant entity ultimately owned by Mondev, called Lafayette Place
Associates (LPA), brought a suit against the City and BRA. The contract
involved a multi-faceted project, but a dispute arose specifically with
respect to LPA’s alleged right to an option to build on a certain site in
the event the City decided to remove structures and to install an underground parking garage. A jury entered substantial verdicts against both
defendants. The trial judge rejected the jury’s verdict against BRA by
reason of a Massachusetts statute giving BRA immunity from suit. He did
not disturb the verdict against the City. The SJC upheld the judge’s
50
Ibid. at p. 103; the author’s translation.
51
76
Freeman at p. 335.
The modern definition of denial of justice
judgment as concerned BRA, but reversed it with respect to the City.
Thus both jury verdicts in favour of LPA were ultimately overturned.
Mondev’s claim of denial of justice focused on three aspects of the
contractual claim against the City. It also challenged the dismissal of its
tort claim against the BRA on the grounds that the United States should
not be able to avoid international responsibility by local enactments
purporting to confer immunity on governmental bodies. This aspect of
the case will be considered in the section on ‘Absolute denial of access
through state immunity’ in Chapter 6.
As for the three complaints arising from the dismissal of the contractual
claim against the City, the SJC essentially reasoned that the plaintiff
under the law of Massachusetts was required to put the non-performing
party in breach. Concretely, this meant that LPA was required to follow
steps defined in the contract to put the City on notice that it demanded
performance. There was no ‘outright refusal’ by the City to perform, and
the evidence did not reveal a notice sufficiently specific to satisfy the law as
established in a precedent from 1954. The Supreme Judicial Court noted
that its analysis applied particularly in the case of ‘a complex and heavily
regulated transaction such as this one, where public entities and public
and elected officials with changing policies and constituencies are
involved, and the transaction spans many years’, and it went on to note
a dictum of Justice Holmes that ‘[m]en must turn square corners when
they deal with the Government’.52 By inference, neither LPA nor
Campeau had turned such corners, and thus ‘LPA was not excused
from its obligation to put the city in default’. Mondev argued that the
judgment involved a ‘significant and serious departure’ from case law,
and that it was exacerbated by its failure to consider whether its allegedly
new approach should apply retrospectively.
The arbitral tribunal expressed doubts that the Massachusetts court had
applied the law in a novel fashion. It noted that ‘all legal systems’ must
define the conditions under which an agreement in principle to transfer
real property may be made legally effective. Even if the court in this case
had made new law, ‘its decision would have fallen within the limits of
common law adjudication’.53 As for the reference to the Holmesian
52
Mondev at para. 130, citing Rock Island, Ark. & La. R. R. v. United States, 254 US 141, 143
(1920).
53
Mondev at para. 133. The quality of the reasoning in the Mondev award is of such a
calibre as to pre-empt dissent. A less sophisticated tribunal might have been less
successful in defusing concerns that the national courts had moved the goalposts to
the detriment of the foreign party. It seems fair to say that the case may leave a
77
Denial of Justice in International Law
pronouncement, the arbitrators accepted that it ‘stands in some tension’
with the proposition that ‘governments are subject to the same rules of
contractual liability as are private parties’. They continued:
To the extent that it might suggest the contrary, the ‘square corners’ rule might
raise a delicate judicial eyebrow. Indeed a governmental prerogative to violate
investment contracts would appear to be inconsistent with the principles embodied in Article 1105 and with contemporary standards of national and international law concerning governmental liability for contractual performance. But in
the Tribunal’s view, the SJC’s remark was at most a subsidiary reason for a
decision founded on normal principles of the Massachusetts law of contracts, and
the SJC expressly disclaimed any intention to absolve governments from performing their contractual obligations. In its context the remark was merely
supplementary and was not itself the basis for the decision.54
The Waste Management II 55 case involved a concession agreement
between a US-controlled corporation called Acaverde and the City of
Acapulco. The agreement contemplated that the City would establish an
irrevocable line of credit with a development bank known as Banobras
(Banco Nacional de Obras y Servicios Publicos) to guarantee ‘all payments’ to the concessionaire. (Banobras was ‘partly owned and substantially controlled by Mexican government agencies’.) A credit agreement
was duly signed between the local government and Banobras, but it was
limited to an amount equal to six monthly payments. On the other hand,
Banobras was given the right to divert federal payments to the local
government as a means of effecting reimbursement under the line of
credit.
In the course of twenty-seven months of operations, Acaverde issued
invoices amounting to 49 million pesos. Only 7 million were paid: somewhat more than 2 million by the City and somewhat less than 5 million by
Banobras. There was controversy as to whether Acaverde had fully
performed its obligations.
Acaverde brought local arbitral proceedings against the City under the
concession agreement. It also initiated cases in the Mexican federal courts
against Banobras under the credit agreement, as an alleged third-party
beneficiary. The arbitration was discontinued without any decision. The
court cases were dismissed both at first instance and on appeal. The US
disquieting sense of possible discrimination in the minds of reasonable readers; the case
was, one surmises, more finely balanced than the arbitrators cared to say.
54
Ibid. at para. 134 (notes omitted).
55
Waste Management, Inc. v. Mexico, award, 30 April 2004, (2004) 43 ILM 967 (Civiletti,
Magallón Gómez, Crawford (presiding)).
78
The modern definition of denial of justice
parent corporation subsequently brought international arbitral proceedings pursuant to Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade
Agreement. The international arbitral tribunal was led to examine
whether either the arbitration or the court proceedings had constituted
a denial of justice.
The issue arising out of the discontinued arbitral proceedings (whether
the refusal of the City of Acapulco to pay its share of the advance payment
on account of the fees of the arbitrators could be deemed a denial of
justice) is discussed in the section on ‘Repudiation by a state of an
agreement to arbitrate’ in Chapter 6.
The federal court proceedings against Banobras involved claims in
respect of unpaid invoices. There were two separate actions, relating to
invoices from 1996 and 1997 respectively. The first action gave rise to a
judgment at first instance on 7 January 1999, upholding Acaverde’s
standing to sue but dismissing the claim on the merits on the ground
that the invoices had not been submitted to the City in the required
manner so as to demonstrate the City’s acceptance. An appeal was
dismissed on 11 March 1999 on the grounds that the Banobras line of
credit was to come into play only in the event of the debtor’s lack of
liquidity; absent proof of accepted invoices, and given the formal notice to
Banobras of a dispute between the City and Acaverde as to the performance of the latter, it was not proved that the non-payment was due to
illiquidity. A constitutional action was dismissed on 6 October 1999.
Although this final court agreed with Acaverde that the court of first
instance had erred in its interpretation of the credit agreement, Acaverde
had not proved that the City had received and accepted its invoices;
unstamped photocopies were not sufficient for this purpose.
The second action resulted in an initial judgment of 12 January 1999
dismissing the claim without prejudice on the grounds that Acaverde
could not claim against Banobras before arbitrating its claim against the
City under the concession agreement. An appeal was rejected on
18 February 1999; a request for reconsideration was rejected on
25 February 1999. Finally, a constitutional action was rejected on 20 May
1999 on the grounds that although Acaverde was entitled to resist the
non-retroactive applicability of new rules of judicial procedure it had
waived any such objection given the way it had initiated and pursued
the action.
Reviewing the record of these unsuccessful parallel actions, the international arbitral tribunal noted that the credit agreement did not guarantee the entirety of the City’s indebtedness under the concession
79
Denial of Justice in International Law
agreement. Therefore ‘the federal proceedings were in any event incapable of resolving Acaverde’s most important grievance’. That being said,
the tribunal reached its conclusion as follows:
Certain of the decisions appear to have been founded on rather technical
grounds, but the notion that the third party beneficiary of a line of credit or
guarantee should strictly prove its entitlement is not a parochial or unusual one.
Nor was it unreasonable, given the limitations of the Line of Credit Agreement,
for the court in the second proceedings to insist that Acaverde comply with the
dispute settlement procedure contained in the Concession Agreement, notice of
the dispute with the City having been given to Banobras.56
The tribunal also noted that there was no evidence of collusion between
the City and either the national arbitral institution referred to in the
concession agreement (CANACO) or the federal courts. As for
Acaverde’s claim that the City adopted a ‘difficult and obstructive’ litigation strategy which itself amounted to a denial of justice, the tribunal
observed that ‘a litigant cannot commit a denial of justice unless its
improper strategies are endorsed and acted on by the court, or unless
the law gives it some extraordinary privilege which leads to a lack of due
process’.57 Ultimately, ‘it was not a denial of justice for the federal courts
to insist on prior action against the City’58 – an initiative which Acaverde
chose not to pursue to its resolution.
In Azinian et al. v. Mexico,59 the grievance arose from the termination of
a waste-disposal concession by the ayuntamiento (city council) of a Mexico
City suburb. The termination had been unsuccessfully challenged before
three levels of Mexican courts. The tribunal stated that it was:
evident that for the Claimants to prevail it is not enough that the Arbitral
Tribunal disagree with the determination of the Ayuntamiento. A governmental
authority surely cannot be faulted for acting in a manner validated by its courts
unless the courts themselves are disavowed at the international level.60
The arbitrators found the fact that the Claimants had raised no complaints against the Mexican courts and did not allege a denial of justice to
be fatal to their claims:
For if there is no complaint against a determination by a competent court that a
contract governed by Mexican law was invalid under Mexican law, there is by
definition no contract to be expropriated.61
56
Ibid. at para. 129. 57 Ibid. at para. 131. 58 Ibid. at para. 132.
1 November 1998, 5 ICSID Reports 269 (Civiletti, von Wobeser, Paulsson (presiding)).
60
Ibid. at para. 97 (emphasis omitted). 61 Ibid. at para. 100.
59
80
The modern definition of denial of justice
Noting that a ‘clear and malicious misapplication of the law’ is a type of
denial of justice – which ‘doubtless overlaps with the notion of ‘‘pretence of
form’’ to mask a violation of international law’ – the arbitral tribunal went
on to observe that no such wrongdoing had been alleged, and that the
evidence showed that the findings of the Mexican judgments ‘cannot
possibly be said to have been arbitrary, let alone malicious’. To the contrary
the arbitrators found that there was ample evidence of misrepresentations
by the Claimants’ representatives in the conclusion of the concession.
But how precisely is one to understand the possibility that international
responsibility may be extant in the event the judgment on the merits
evidences impermissible bias? Although de Visscher, as seen above,
clearly spelled out the general rule – errare humanum est, with no international responsibility for violations of national law – he then went on to
write that complaints against the substance of a national judgment may
‘exceptionally’ be heard ‘if it is shown that under the colour of justice
rendered, justice was denied’.62 Is this to be understood as an exception to
the general rule, or something else?
The erroneous application of national law cannot, in itself, be an
international denial of justice. Unless somehow qualified by international
law, rights created under national law are limited by national law, including the principle that by operation of the fundamental rule of res judicata a
determination by a court of final appeal is definitive. So even if an
instance of municipal mal jugé is given weight by international adjudicators
when determining that there has been a denial of justice, on the footing
that rights created under national law have been so blatantly disregarded
as to compel conviction with respect to violation of international standards proscribing discrimination, bias, undue influence, or the like, it
remains the case that the international wrong is not the misapplication
of national law.
Demise of substantive denial of justice
Three generations ago, conventional doctrine was expressed confidently
by Freeman as follows:
practice, as well as the overwhelming preponderance of legal authority, recognises
that not only flagrant procedural irregularities and deficiencies may justify diplomatic complaint, but also gross defects in the substance of the judgment itself. 63
62
De Visscher at p. 395.
63
Freeman at p. 309.
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Denial of Justice in International Law
The distinction has, it seems, been perpetuated by repetition; writers
continue to describe denial of justice as either procedural or substantive.
Yet in modern international law there is no place for substantive denial
of justice. Numerous international awards demonstrate that the most
perplexing and unconvincing national judgments are upheld on the
grounds that international law does not overturn determinations of
national judiciaries with respect to their own law. To insist that there is
a substantive denial of justice reserved for ‘grossly’ unconvincing determinations is to create an unworkable distinction. If a judgment is grossly unjust,
it is because the victim has not been afforded fair treatment. That is the
basis for responsibility, not the misapplication of national law in itself.
Extreme cases should thus be dealt with on the footing that they are so
unjustifiable that they could have been only the product of bias or some
other violation of the right of due process. Once again, Fitzmaurice merits
extensive quotation:
if all that a judge does is to make a mistake, i.e. to arrive at a wrong conclusion of
law or fact, even though it results in serious injustice, the state is not responsible.
There can be no question of the soundness of the above position. Yet, as every
one who has had any practical experience of the matter knows, the rule that a
state is not responsible for the bona fide errors of its courts can be, and all too
frequently is, made use of in order to enable responsibility to be evaded in cases
where there is a virtual certainty that bad faith has been present, but no
conclusive proof of it . . .
One of the chief difficulties in applying the rule that the bona fide errors of
courts do not involve responsibility lies in the fact that the question of whether
there has been a ‘denial of justice’ cannot, strictly speaking, be answered merely
by having regard to the degree of injustice involved. The only thing which can
establish a denial of justice so far as a judgment is concerned is an affirmative
answer, duly supported by evidence, to some such question as ‘Was the court
guilty of bias, fraud, dishonesty, lack of impartiality, or gross incompetence?’ If
the answer to this question is in the negative, then, strictly speaking, it is
immaterial how unjust the judgment may have been. The relevance of the
degree of injustice really lies only in its evidential value. An unjust judgment may
and often does afford strong evidence that the court was dishonest, or rather it raises a strong
presumption of dishonesty. It may even afford conclusive evidence, if the injustice be sufficiently
flagrant, so that the judgment is of a kind which no honest and competent court could possibly
have given. 64
64
Fitzmaurice at pp. 112–113 (emphasis added).
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The modern definition of denial of justice
The most difficult cases in this respect are evidently those where there is
strong suspicion, but no proof, of bad faith. Fitzmaurice’s solution was as
follows:
In almost all such cases it is probable that the court will have committed some
more or less serious error, in the sense of a wrong conclusion of law or of fact.
This suggests that the right method is to concentrate on the question whether the
court was competent rather than on whether it was honest. The question will
then be, was the error of such a character that no competent judge could have
made it? If the answer is in the affirmative, it follows that the judge was either
dishonest, in which case the state is clearly responsible, or that he was incompetent, in which case the responsibility of the state is also engaged for failing in its
duty of providing competent judges. 65
And we can go further. Pleading for Spain in Barcelona Traction, Paul
Guggenheim conceded that a presumption of judicial bad faith or culpa
late could arise, in the case of ‘exceptionally outrageous or monstrously
grave’ breaches of municipal law. In such cases, he added, it must be shown
that ‘one can no longer explain the sentence rendered by any factual
consideration or by any valid legal reason’.66 Three decades earlier, the
government of Venezuela, in its memorial in the Martini case, had similarly acknowledged that ‘not an erroneous judgment, but a gross error, an
inexcusable error’ could give rise to international responsibility.67
This approach may give rise to more controversy and discord than one
would wish to see in the international realm where national sensitivities
are acute. Pragmatically, it may be wiser to consider that if in such
difficult cases the perpetrators of the unfairness are incapable of dissimulating their conduct under the cover of formally irreproachable reasoning,
they are equally likely to be guilty of serious procedural missteps and on
that account provide better justification for finding denial of justice; to
declare that judgments under national law are rationally unsustainable
65
Ibid. at pp. 113–114. De Visscher conceived, at 381, that part of a state’s international
obligation concerns the ‘proper recruitment of judges’ (recrutement convenable des
magistrats); and, at 394, that its duty is to ‘place at the disposal of foreigners a judicial
organisation capable, by the laws that regulate it as well as by the men who comprise it, of
achieving the effective protection of their rights’ (emphasis added).
66
CR 69/25, 23 May 1969, quoted in Jiménez de Aréchaga, ‘International
Responsibility of States’, at p. 185.
67
Quoted in de Visscher at p. 406, note 1. The Venezuelan government’s comment was,
however, irrelevant. The issue was not whether a Venezuelan judgment repudiating an
international award was an error, inexcusable or not, of national law, but whether it
violated an international undertaking to respect that award.
83
Denial of Justice in International Law
may expose the international jurisdiction to the criticism that it does not
have an adequate intellectual foundation in the relevant national law.
It may seem that this discussion seriously undercuts the conclusions of
the previous section (the general rule of non-revision) as well as the title of
the present one. What needs to be understood is that even if in extreme
cases the substantive quality of a judgment may lead to a finding of denial
of justice, the objective of the international adjudicator is never to conduct
a substantive view. As Fitzmaurice put it in the lengthier of the two
quotations above: ‘it is immaterial how unjust the judgment may have
been’.68
The demonstration of this proposition requires that one consider two
questions: does a judicial organ of a state which violates international law
thereby automatically commit a denial of justice? Absent a violation of
international law, may such an organ commit a denial of justice by erroneously applying its national law? The answer to each question is negative.
Judgments in breach of international law
When a national judiciary renders a decision violative of international
law, a tribunal having jurisdiction to apply international law is free, indeed
required, to substitute its judgment for that of the national court if it
disagrees with the way the latter has interpreted or applied international
law. Such is the necessary consequence of treating national courts, as one
must, as neither more nor less than an instrumentality of the state; and of
excluding, as one must, that the state be judge and party in its own case.
It does not follow that the national court’s misapplication of international law is a denial of justice. We have already considered this matter in
the section of this chapter entitled ‘Relationship with specific rights
created by international law’. If a court has violated a treaty, the state
to which its actions are imputed is internationally responsible in the same
way as any other agency of the state. The fact that the culpable agency is
charged with the administration of justice does not justify or require a
special nomenclature.
So if two countries sign a treaty under which they agree that the citizens
of each, when before the other’s courts, are entitled to trials in the course
of which able-bodied witnesses will not be heard unless they stand on one
leg when testifying, a court which neglects that requirement may violate
international law by reason of its breach of the treaty, but does not
68
Fitzmaurice at p. 112.
84
The modern definition of denial of justice
commit a denial of justice under international law. (If a vast and durable
majority of states came to require one-legged testimony, the requirement
might be absorbed into customary international law, and thus relevant to
the assessment of claim of denial of justice, but that is a different matter.)
For a more realistic illustration, imagine that a national of a state which
is not a party to the New York Convention on the Recognition and
Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards presents an ordinary commercial arbitral award rendered in Edinburgh for enforcement in Indonesia.
Under local rules, all foreign awards intended to be enforced in Indonesia
must be presented to the Central Jakarta District Court. The matter is
heard after due notice, in observance of unobjectionable procedures and
without any suggestion of bias. There is, in other words, no procedural
denial of justice. Nevertheless, the petition is dismissed because the
applicant is not a national of a state signatory to the New York
Convention and because he has not presented a certificate from
Indonesian consular services in Edinburgh.
Such is in fact the tenor of the Indonesian Supreme Court Regulation
no. 1990/1, which provides in Article 5(4) that a petition for the enforcement of a foreign arbitral award must be accompanied by, among other
things:
(c) a statement from the Indonesian diplomatic representative in the country
where the said foreign arbitral award was issued, declaring that the country of the
petitioner is bilaterally bound with Indonesia in an international convention
concerning the recognition and enforcement of a foreign arbitral award. 69
To deny enforcement because of the applicant’s nationality is a clear
violation of the New York Convention. The only permitted condition of
reciprocity permitted under the New York Convention is that the place of
arbitration (e.g. Edinburgh) be in a country (e.g. the United Kingdom)
which is also a party to the Convention. The requirement of a consular
certificate is certainly also a violation of the Convention, given that
Article V of that instrument provides that such a petition may be refused
only if one of a limited set of exceptions apply; those exceptions do not
include the absence of such a certificate. (Moreover, Article III forbids
‘substantially more onerous conditions . . . than are imposed on the
recognition and enforcement of domestic arbitral awards’.) One need
only consider that there exist a multitude of plausible places of arbitration
where there are no Indonesian consular services, not to mention the
69
‘Indonesia’, in (1991) XVI International Handbook on Commercial Arbitration 398, at p. 400.
85
Denial of Justice in International Law
unlikelihood that a member of any consular staff would readily take it upon
himself – in the absence of any directives or standardised procedures – to
study the file of the arbitration and then execute an ad hoc certificate at the
behest of a foreigner who wishes to use it to collect money in Indonesia,
and thus very likely against an Indonesian party.
Since the Regulation itself contradicts an international treaty, the
responsibility of Indonesia could be invoked immediately by any state
which is a party to the Convention, even in the absence of any refusal of
enforcement in a particular case, on the basis that every signatory state
has an interest in seeing that awards rendered in its territory are reliable
pursuant to the terms of the Convention. Indonesia’s liability would be
founded on the breach of international lex specialis (the Convention), not
on a denial of justice.
And once the Indonesian courts make a decision to refuse enforcement
on grounds which are violative of international law, there is a clear
international wrong which has no relation to any inherent defect in the
Indonesian court proceedings. Responsibility for such a delict could be
invoked either by the disappointed applicant’s state or by the applicant
directly before any competent international tribunal.
If an international tribunal has been given the authority to apply
international law, it has the authority and the duty to apply it in its
entirety, including the fundamental concept that the pronouncements
of a national judiciary, properly viewed as no different from other instrumentalities of its state, are not binding in international adjudication
whenever they purport to assess the international legality of action by
the very state of which it is an organ.
Finally, one may consider the hypothesis of a national law which by its
terms creates a denial of justice, or which is held by a court to create a
denial of justice. (Instances might be decrees to the effect that persons of a
particular nationality may no longer have standing in court, or to the
effect that previously agreed arbitral tribunals are divested of jurisdiction;
or decrees interpreted by judges to have such effect.) Might it not be said that
these are substantive denials of justice, because they require determinations that the national laws or judgments are wrong? Freeman seemed to
think so when he wrote that:
a judgment which is perfectly valid under municipal law may work a denial of
justice because the law itself is contrary to international law. 70
70
Freeman at p. 310.
86
The modern definition of denial of justice
A better view is that the validity under national law of such a decree or
judgment is irrelevant when reviewed at the international level. The
question is whether the national decree or judgment operates a denial
of justice under the criteria of international law. The denial of justice, once
more, is not substantive error, but fundamental unfairness as understood
by reference to international norms.
Judgments in breach of national law
Whenever an international tribunal rejects a decision founded on a
national judicial authority’s interpretation of its own law, it does so for
reasons which are properly understood as based on a determination that
the process was defective.
As Commissioner Nielsen put it in an often-quoted passage from his
opinion in the Neer case: ‘strict conformity by authorities of a government
with its domestic law is not necessarily conclusive evidence of the observance of legal duties imposed by international law, although it may be
important evidence on that point’.71
It is not easy for a complainant to overcome the presumption of
adequacy and thus to establish international responsibility for denial of
procedural justice. The fact that the international tribunal seized of the
matter may believe it would have applied national law differently – ‘mere
error’ – is in and of itself of no moment.
Yet some authorities continue to suggest that substantive denial of
justice may exceptionally occur with respect to national law. In the first
award rendered in the much-discussed Vivendi v. Argentina case,72 the
arbitral tribunal stated, obiter, that the effect of a contractual jurisdiction
clause referring to municipal courts was that no claim could arise against
the state unless:
the Claimants were treated unfairly in those courts (denial of procedural justice)
or if the judgments of those courts were substantively unfair (denial of substantive
justice) or otherwise denied rights [under a relevant bilateral treaty]. 73
71
L. F. H. Neer and Pauline Neer (US v. Mexico), 15 October 1926, IV RIAA 60, at p. 64.
Compañı́a de Aguas del Aqonquija and Vivendi Universal (formerly Compagnie Générale des Eaux) v.
Argentina, award, 21 November 2000, 5 ICSID Reports 296; (2001) 40 ILM 426. (Award
partially annulled on grounds irrelevant here, 3 July 2002; 6 ICSID Reports 340; (2002)
41 ILM 1135.)
73
Ibid. at para. 80.
72
87
Denial of Justice in International Law
It is useful to examine a precedent said to support this proposition. In
the De Sabla case,74 decided by the US–Panama General Claims
Commission in 1932, the claimant’s grievance was that her land had
been treated as though it were public property, and as such had been
granted to other individuals. The Government answered that under
Panamanian law applications for land grant were approved unless opposition were made, and that the claimant’s failure to make opposition meant
that the grants of parcels of her land were lawful. The Commission held to
the contrary that the adjudication of the grants by the public administrator was wrongful:
Since the land laws by their terms contemplated the adjudication only of public
lands, and since the result of granting adjudications on private property was to
deprive the owner of his property without compensation, the burden of persuasion on this issue is clearly on Panama. She has failed to sustain it . . .
The legislative intent clearly was, not that private owners should have to
protect their rights by constant oppositions, but that adjudications should be
made only on lands shown to be public on the [national land] map, and that the
Administrators should reject of their own accord applications for lands appearing as private property on the map. 75
Freeman categorises this case as an exception to the general rule that
misapplication of national law is not a denial of justice.76 His analysis is
unpersuasive. The case does not stand as an exception to the general
principle just mentioned; it falls more convincingly either under the
category of violation of the substantive international rule against dispossession without compensation, or yet again as a procedural denial of justice;
as the Commission itself wrote, the Panamanian ‘machinery of opposition, as actually administered, did not constitute an adequate remedy to
the claimant for the protection of her property’.77
From time to time, the literature in the field has referred to three types
of exceptions to the general rule described in this chapter under the
heading ‘No responsibility for misapplication of national law’. In fact
the discussion would be clearer if it were recognised that there are,
properly speaking, no exceptions to the rule.
The first false exception is that of judgments vitiated by bad faith
however perceived: fraud, bias, dishonesty or malice. The reason why
this is not a true exception to the rule is that such cases have nothing to
74
75
Marguerite de Joly de Sabla (US v. Panama), 29 June 1933, VI RIAA 358.
Ibid. at p. 360. 76 Freeman at pp. 346–347. 77 De Sabla, VI RIAA 358, at p. 363.
88
The modern definition of denial of justice
do with the degree of deference international law gives to the substantive
content of judgments applying national law. They involve situations where
the defect of the judgment lies in its circumstances and not its content, and
are therefore properly to be understood as procedural denials of justice.
The second false exception is that of judgments in contravention of
international law. Here again, such cases have nothing to do with the
degree of deference international law gives to the meaning attributed to
national law by the national judiciary. Although they are instances of
substantive denials of justice, they do not purport to overrule the national
judge’s determination of his own law; to the contrary, they accept it as
such – and then rule on the consequences of any violation of international
law inherent in that determination.
The third false exception is that of gross incompetence; a judgment so
poor that it cannot be accepted as the verdict of a legal system worthy of
the name. The point is not that the international tribunal considers that it
would have applied the national law differently; that would plainly be
insufficient to establish a denial of justice.
The Senate of Hamburg did not provide much illumination when it
wrote, in a dictum in Cotesworth & Powell, that states are responsible for
judgments pronounced or executed in ‘flagrant violation of the law’ or
when they are ‘manifestly unjust’. Such expressions invite rather than
resolve controversy. Writers like Fitzmaurice and de Visscher provide better
elucidation when they suggest that there must be an element of bad faith or
culpable negligence. As de Visscher put it, one needs to distinguish:
the simple mal jugé, to be equated with judicial error, from grave and manifest
injustice stemming from aggravated fault or from malice toward foreigners as a
group or toward the nationals of a particular country. 78
If no judge could reasonably have reached the challenged decision, the
inference is that it was not rendered by an independent judicial mind
deciding according to its conscience. What is required is that the international tribunal be persuaded that the error was of a kind which no
‘competent judge could reasonably have made’.79 Needless to say, the
burden of proof is difficult to sustain.
True, unlike the first two false exceptions, such a remarkable instance
would indeed be one where international law declines to defer to the
national judgment. But this is not because of an ordinary disagreement.
Rather it reflects a grave defect in the legal system, and therefore a failure
78
De Visscher at p. 399.
79
Fitzmaurice at p. 114.
89
Denial of Justice in International Law
to abide by the obligation to provide an acceptable mechanism to hear the
grievances of foreigners.
Confirmation of the distinction
The distinction proposed above between injury to foreigners under internal
and international law was given similar importance in James Fawcett’s study
in 1954 in the analogous context of ‘The Exhaustion of Local Remedies:
Substance v. Procedure?’80 With respect to violations of internal law, as
Fawcett perceived, international responsibility arises only from acts or omissions of the defendant state’s authorities in the course of the alien’s attempts to
secure redress, and not as a function of the outcome. The exhaustion of local
remedies rule is hence a material necessity before any international responsibility may be established, in the same way as it is a material element of the
international delict of denial of justice (see Chapter 5). To the contrary, a
violation of international law by national authorities has quite unrelated
consequences for exhaustion of remedies, on the one hand, and denial of
justice, on the other. In this hypothesis, exhaustion is a procedural precondition
for diplomatic protection (with a number of consequences, e.g. with respect
to issues of prescription, waiver and the date of satisfying nationality requirements); but the violation, whatever it is, will not be a denial of justice at all but
a breach of another obligation of international law.
With a remarkable economy of expression, Dugard captured all
strands of reflection in the following formulation:
where the injury is caused by an act constituting a violation of municipal law but
not of international law, international responsibility commences only after the
exhaustion of local remedies resulting in a denial of justice. 81
State responsibility for subdivisions
As a matter of national law, a host of familiar problems surround the
constitutional basis upon which the central government may enter into
international obligations on behalf of a federated state.
80
81
(1954) 31 BYIL 452.
International Law Commission (Dugard), Second Report on Diplomatic Protection,
UN Doc. A/CN.4/514 (2001) at p. 30, para. 61; see also p. 32, para. 63. Accord,
G. Fitzmaurice, ‘Hersch Lauterpacht – The Scholar as Judge’, (1961) 37 BYIL 53;
Ian Brownlie, Principles of Public International Law (6th edn, Oxford University Press,
2003), at p. 473.
90
The modern definition of denial of justice
As a matter of contract law, there are also a number of issues peculiar to
the relationship that may be created by a foreign investor and the
government of a province entitled to act in its name and to answer for
its debts.
These weighty subjects are beyond the scope of this book. A federated
state which has entered into international obligations cannot escape them
by attributing allegedly unlawful acts or omissions to its subdivisions. (The
obligations of customary international law do not, of course, require
positive acknowledgement, but are a consequence of statehood.)
Freeman wrote that international responsibility:
attaches itself to all States no matter what their political structure may be and
even though their internal organization be such that, as in federal systems of
government, the nation may be unable to fulfill it by actions through agencies
under its direct control . . .
Neither the practical nor legal domestic difficulties inherent in the particular
political system chosen by the territorial State may be pleaded in bar of the claims
advanced by other States. 82
With respect to the proposition that a federal state is responsible for its
component units, the International Law Commission’s commentary to
Article 4 (‘Conduct of organs of a State’) of its Articles on Responsibility of
States for Internationally Wrongful Acts cites eleven cases in a ‘consistent
series of decisions to this effect’.83 It observes that it is ‘equally irrelevant
whether the internal law of the State in question gives the federal parliament power to compel the component unit to abide by the State’s
international obligations’,84 quoting the Pellat case to the effect that
responsibility ‘cannot be denied, not even in cases where the federal
Constitution denies the central Government the right of control over
the separate states or the right to require them to comply, in their
conduct, with the rules of international law’.85
As the International Court of Justice put it succinctly in 1999: ‘the
Governor of Arizona is under the obligation to act in conformity with the
international undertakings of the United States’.86 (If it were argued that
the Governor did not have a constitutional duty to respect international
82
Freeman at pp. 369–370.
James Crawford, The International Law Commission’s Articles on State Responsibility:
Introduction, Text and Commentaries (Cambridge University Press, 2002), at p. 97.
84
Ibid.
85
Estate of Hyacinthe Pellat (France v. Mexico), 7 June 1929, V RIAA 534, at p. 536.
86
LaGrand (Germany v. US) Provisional Measures, 1999 ICJ Reports 9, at p. 16, para. 28.
83
91
Denial of Justice in International Law
law as a matter of national law, this simply means that international
adjudicators will hold the federal state responsible for the breach – a
variation of the constant theme that international law must trump
national law in the same way that national law trumps the individual
volition of citizens.87)
This proposition is illustrated by the Loewen case, in which the US
Government’s liability for the miscarriage of justice perpetrated by the
courts of Mississippi was acknowledged in principle. (As we shall see in
Chapter 5, the claim failed for other reasons.) The pleadings of the parties
in that case provided a wealth of references to authority; they are readily
available88 and will not be repeated here.
What is perhaps more surprising is that the subject had considerable
antecedents in the United States. The issue was raised by a US President
(Harrison) in his annual State of the Union address in 1891, and his
precise words were repeated with approval by one of his successors
(McKinley) in the latter’s State of the Union address in 1900. This
extraordinary attention of the part of successive heads of state of one of
the best-known federated nations to such a technical issue was the product
of a crisis in US relations with Italy as a consequence of five instances of
multiple lynchings of Italian immigrants by American mobs. In all
instances – in Louisiana, Colorado and Mississippi – the victims were in
the custody of local police or penitentiary officers. On the first occasion
(involving the lynching of eleven Italians in New Orleans, apparently as a
result of allegations that they had been involved in murderous ‘machinations of a secret society called the Mafia’), President Harrison said this:
Some suggestions growing out of this unhappy incident are worthy the attention
of Congress. It would, I believe be entirely competent for Congress to make
offenses against the treaty rights of foreigners domiciled in the United States
cognisable in the Federal courts. This has not, however, been done, and the
Federal officers and courts have no power in such cases to intervene either for the
protection of a foreign citizen or for the punishment of his slayers. It seems to me
to follow, in this state of the law, that the officers of the State charged with police
and judicial powers in such cases must, in the consideration of international
questions growing out of such incidents, be regarded in such sense as Federal
agents as to make this Government answerable for their acts. 89
87
See Note 51 of Chapter 2 above.
On a number of Internet websites rapidly identifiable by any leading search engine.
89
Moore, Digest, vol. VI, at p. 840, para. 1026.
88
92
The modern definition of denial of justice
Further incidents of lynchings of Italian nationals took place under the
presidency of Grover Cleveland, prompting the latter to ask Congress –
‘without discussing the question of liability of the United States’ – to
appropriate monies for ‘reasonable pecuniary provision’ for the victims
or their families.
In 1900, after five prisoners of Italian origin were taken from jail and
hanged by a mob in Tallulah, Louisiana, McKinley noted that there still
was no legislation of the type proposed by Harrison and commended its
reconsideration by Congress. He reiterated in extenso the passage quoted
above from Harrison’s State of the Union address of 1891.90
In sum, the internal laws of a state cannot insulate its international
liability. Nor does it appear ever to have been argued that an alien who
knows about the internal regime waives any objection when he enters the
country. Whatever rights a state may have to bar the alien’s entry, once he
is admitted the minimum standards of international law apply.
Attempts at codification
The word ‘codification’ appears in the title of a collection of texts published in 1974 by three eminent scholars who had been particularly
involved in the work of the International Law Commission on State
Responsibility (Professor Garcı́a-Amador) and in the elaboration, under
the aegis of the Harvard Law School, of the 1961 Draft Convention on
the International Responsibility of States for Injuries to Aliens (Professors
Sohn and Baxter).91 Of course their use of the word should not disguise
the fact that these efforts were merely aspirational; they were attempts at
codification.92
90
Ibid. at pp. 845–848.
F. V. Garcı́a-Amador, Louis B. Sohn and R. R. Baxter, Recent Codification of the Law of
State Responsibility for Injuries to Aliens (Dobbs Ferry, NY: Oceana, 1974).
92
The governments which generated the Charter of the United Nations were firmly
opposed to conferring on the United Nations legislative power to enact binding rules of
international law. They also rejected proposals to give the General Assembly the power
to impose conventions on states by vote. There was, however, strong support for
conferring on the General Assembly the more limited powers of study and
recommendation for the purpose of ‘encouraging the progressive development of
international law and its codification’ (UN Charter, Article 13(1)(a)). When the
International Law Commission was established in 1947, its Statute provided that the
‘Commission shall have for its object the promotion of the progressive development of
international law and its codification’. Article 15 makes a distinction ‘for convenience’
between progressive development as ‘the preparation of draft conventions on subjects which
91
93
Denial of Justice in International Law
Graver reservations must be made with respect to earlier efforts. In his
Report to the ILC, Garcı́a-Amador decried that international case law on
denial of justice, ‘considered as a whole, do[es] not yield any general and
objective criteria applicable to situations which occur in reality’. He
immediately went on to refer to previous proposed codifications, which
he contended offered ‘surer guidance’; although not always agreeing ‘on
the definition of the acts and omissions which give rise to responsibility,
they do in general agree remarkably on fundamental points’.93
He was demonstrably wrong. There may have been some justice in his
critique of the body of precedents, but that will always be so with respect
to the application of fundamental open-textured principles such as ‘equitable delimitation’, ‘proportional response’, or, with regard to our subject,
‘fair trial’. This study seeks to prove that the international jurisprudence is
not chaotic. But Garcı́a-Amador was flatly in error about what he said he
perceived as remarkable agreement on fundamental points in early texts
proposing formulation of an international rule of denial of justice. This is
manifest in his own citations.
He first referred to the 1927 Guerrero Report, which had been so
thoroughly discredited by Freeman94 (whose own seminal work was
curiously not cited by Garcı́a-Amador). That report, which stands as a
high-water mark of Latin American attempts to minimise the ambit of the
international delict, was irreducibly focused on affirming what type of
conduct should not be deemed a denial of justice, rather than on the
contrary. It proposed, for example:
That a State has fulfilled its international duty as soon as the judicial authorities
have given their decision, even if those authorities merely state that the petition,
suit or appeal lodged by the foreigner is not admissible.
That proposition naturally left only the narrowest scope for responsibility:
Denial of justice consists in refusing to allow foreigners easy access to the courts to
defend those rights which the national law accords them. A refusal of the
competent judge to exercise jurisdiction also constitutes a denial of justice. 95
have not yet been regulated by international law or in regard to which the law has not
yet been sufficiently developed in the practice of States’ and codification as ‘the more
precise formulation and systematization of rules of international law in fields where
there already has been extensive State practice, precedent and doctrine’.
93
Garcı́a-Amador, Sohn and Baxter, Recent Codification, at p. 24, reprinting paras. 133 ss
of the author’s Second Report to the ILC, UN Doc. A/CN.4/106 (1957).
94
See the quotations in the section on ‘The impulse to limit the scope of denial of justice’
in Chapter 2.
95
League of Nations Document C.196.M70.1927.V, at p. 104.
94
The modern definition of denial of justice
There is a blindingly obvious omission from this proposal: any qualitative
requirement of the processes of national courts.
In this respect the Guerrero Report was wholly at odds with other texts
quoted by Garcı́a-Amador. For example, the Institute of International
Law had proposed, in Article V(3) of its draft on the International
Responsibility of States for Injuries on their Territory to the Person or
Property of Foreigners adopted in Lausanne the same year, findings of
liability whenever ‘the tribunals do not offer the guarantees which are
indispensable to the proper administration of justice’.96
Proposition 5(4) of the so-called ‘Bases of Discussion’ drafted by the
Preparatory Committee of the Hague Conference in 1930 suggested that
an unappealable judgment would constitute a denial of justice if it ‘is
irreconcilable with the treaty obligations or the international duties of the
State’.97 As discussed at length in this chapter, such a proposition is
unhelpful; there is no purpose in duplicating an existing duty by incorporating its breach in the concept of denial of justice.
The Montevideo Conference of American States in 1933, following
closely on Guerrero’s conception, specified that the scope of denial of
justice ‘shall always be interpreted restrictively, that is, in favor of the
sovereignty of the State in which the difference may have risen’.98 This
promotion of a special rule of evidence for denial of justice happily seems
to have found no echo in the jurisprudence, which contents itself with the
general principles that a claimant must prove his case and that it is not
lightly to be concluded that the organs of a state consciously violate
international law.
Other inter-American texts made it clear that wrongfulness could be
determined only in accordance with municipal law,99 thereby amputating
the fundamental basis of an international obligation.
The 1929 Harvard-sponsored draft Convention on the Law of
Responsibility of States for Damages Done in Their Territory to the
Person or Property of Foreigners represented a significant advance. Its
96
(1928) 22 AJIL 330 (Special supplement). 97 Freeman at p. 634.
The International Conferences of American States, First Supplement, 1933–1940
(Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1940), at p. 92;
Freeman at p. 722.
99
Garcı́a-Amador, Sohn and Baxter, Recent Codification, at p. 25; see, e.g., the Santiago
Conference of American States in 1923; Freeman at p. 717; defining, as denial of
justice, cases where ‘the fundamental rules of the procedure in force in the country have
been violated’ (emphasis added).
98
95
Denial of Justice in International Law
Article 9 made a commendable effort at specificity (which moved it all the
further away from Guerrero’s minimalism):
A state is responsible if an injury to an alien results from a denial of justice. Denial
of justice exists when there is a denial, unwarranted delay or obstruction of access
to courts, gross deficiency in the administration of judicial or remedial process,
failure to provide those guarantees which are generally considered indispensable
in the proper administration of justice, or a manifestly unjust judgment. An error
of a national court which does not produce manifest injustice is not a denial of
justice. 100
But the most extreme antipode to the Guerrero Report is to be found in
the 1961 Draft Convention on the International Responsibility of States
for Injuries to Aliens,101 which defines denial of justice under three
articles. The first two – captioned ‘Denial of Access to a Tribunal or an
Administrative Authority’ and ‘Denial of a Fair Hearing’ – were innovative only in their attempt at exhaustiveness. The title to Article 8 would
clearly lift some eyebrows: ‘Adverse Decisions and Judgments’. Its content
would do more than that; subparagraph (b) makes clear that the authors
of the draft were proposing that a judgment should be held internationally
wrongful ‘if it unreasonably departs from the principles of justice recognized by the principal legal systems of the world’.102 In view of what the
present chapter of this book has sought to establish by way of positive
international law, it should not be surprising that the award in Amco II, by
an ICSID tribunal presided by Rosalyn Higgins, flatly referred to this
Draft Convention generally as being ‘of doubtful weight as persuasive
authority of international law’.103
Garcı́a-Amador’s own reports for the ILC are extensive and interesting. For present purposes, it is sufficient to note that by 1961 – the year
before he left the ILC – the draft which appeared as an addendum to his
sixth report treated our subject in two ways: implicitly, among the definitions in Article 1 of ‘rights of aliens’, and explicitly, under Article 3
entitled ‘Acts and omissions involving denial of justice’.104 Article 1
provided:
100
Harvard Law School, Research in International Law, II, Responsibility of States (Cambridge,
MA, 1929) at p. 134; (1929) 23 AJIL 133, at p. 173 (Special supplement).
101
(1961) 55 AJIL 548. This text was to a considerable degree based on the 1929 Harvard
draft, above.
102
Ibid. at p. 551. 103 Amco II at para. 123.
104
International Law Commission (Garcı́a-Amador), Sixth Report on State
Responsibility, Addendum, UN Doc. A/CN.4/134/Add. 1 (1961).
96
The modern definition of denial of justice
1.
2.
For the purpose of the application of the provisions of this draft, aliens enjoy
the same rights and the same legal guarantees as nationals, but these rights
and guarantees shall in no case be less than the ‘human rights and fundamental freedoms’ recognized and defined in contemporary international
instruments.
The ‘human rights and fundamental freedoms’ referred to in the foregoing
paragraph are those enumerated below:
...
(d) The right to a public hearing, with proper safeguards, by the competent
organs of the State, in the substantiation of any criminal charge or in the
determination of rights and obligations under civil law;
(e) In criminal matters, the right of the accused to be presumed innocent
until proved guilty; the right to be informed of the charge made against
him in a language which he understands; the right to present his
defence personally or to be defended by a counsel of his choice; the
right not to be convicted of any punishable offence on account of any
act or omission which did not constitute an offence, under national or
international law, at the time when it was committed; the right to be
tried without delay or to be released.
Article 3 read thus:
1.
2.
3.
4.
The State is responsible for the injuries caused to an alien by acts or
omissions which involve a denial of justice.
For the purposes of the foregoing paragraph, a ‘denial of justice’ shall be
deemed to occur if the courts deprive the alien of any one of the rights or
safeguards specified in article 1, paragraph 2(c), (d) and (e), of this draft.
For the same purposes, a ‘denial of justice’ shall also be deemed to occur if a
manifestly unjust decision is rendered with the evident intention of causing
injury to the alien. However, judicial error, whatever the result of the
decision, does not give rise to international responsibility on the part of
the State.
Likewise, the alien shall be deemed to have suffered a denial of justice if a
decision by a municipal or international court in his favour is not carried
out, provided that the failure to carry out such decision is due to a clear
intention to cause him injury.
This bifurcation of the subject illustrates a development which had taken
a concrete and important form in 1950 when the European Convention
of Human Rights was promulgated. Like Article 1 of the just-quoted
draft, that Convention does not use the expression ‘denial of justice’, but
gives its principal substantive elements the force of positive international
treaty-based law. (As noted in Chapter 1, the general heading denial of
97
Denial of Justice in International Law
justice may lose currency in lex specialis, but its substance and its influence
will remain.)
Still, viewed on the whole, the old attempts at codification are of limited
value. Worse, when taken in isolation they can lead to great error.
Fortunately, drafts remain drafts, and we can today benefit from the
cross-fertilisation of the customary international law of denial of justice
and the important jurisprudence that has arisen pursuant to the positive
international legislation to be found in modern treaties, notably in the
realm of human rights. They will enrich Chapters 6 and 7 of this study.
Summary
No enumerative approach to defining denial of justice has succeeded in
the past, and there are no prospects that one will emerge in the future.
Rather, as with the norms of due process that have developed with respect
to the protection of human rights, international adjudicators will perforce
have to confront the task of giving concrete content to the notion of
‘fundamental fairness in the administration of justice’.
Denial of justice is always procedural. There may be extreme cases
where the proof of the failed process is that the substance of a decision is so
egregiously wrong that no honest or competent court could possibly have
given it. Such cases would sanction the state’s failure to provide a decent
system of justice. They do not constitute an international appellate review
of national law.
A national court’s breach of other rules of international law, or of
treaties, is not a denial of justice, but a direct violation of the relevant
obligation imputable to the state like any acts or omissions by its agents.
These are the conclusions that emerge from this chapter. At the heart
of the matter lies an irreductible difficulty: the notion of fundamental
procedural fairness. Defenders of the conduct of national authorities will
in all difficult cases be able to insist with vehemence that there has been no
proof that they have failed to meet minimum standards. These are issues of
degree and judgment, and ultimately come down, as we shall see in
Chapter 9, to acceptance or rejection of international adjudication.
To observe this difficulty is not, however, to concede that there is
something extraordinary about denial of justice that requires apology
for the elasticity of the concept. Law (international and national alike)
knows many such notions. It is not possible to ‘prove’ in an absolute sense
that a party has acted in reasonable reliance on the representations of
another, or that it has taken reasonable or proportional steps to mitigate
98
The modern definition of denial of justice
damages or to protect itself. Any law student could multiply the examples.
It is possible only to prove such propositions to the satisfaction of a trier of fact.
So once again the issue is whether one accepts to yield sufficient national
sovereignty to respect the judgment of international jurisdictions.
To say that a concept is inherently difficult is not to say that it is confusing.
So why did Freeman and the other leading writers of his day – de Visscher,
Fitzmaurice, Eagleton – decry their subject as one of such confusion? If
they were right, should one not admit that the subject remains confused?
They were right, but their conclusion no longer holds. The confusion of
their time was artificial. It was born of the impulse to expand the notion of
denial of justice to encompass every form of international wrong, due to
the fact that demands for international reparation were once invariably
articulated as responses to denials of justice. Any wrong would thus be spoken of
as a denial of justice because it was not remedied by national justice. Moreover,
unnecessary fictions were created to the effect that denial of justice related
only to the mishandling of claims rather than defences, and that a denial
of justice was necessarily a second wrong in the failure to correct an initial
wrong. The notion of ‘manifest injustice’ emerged to cover the cases of
mistreated defendants, or of maladministration of justice independent of a
separate initial wrong. These were indeed confusing concepts, and they
were compounded by the fact that the delict was invariably prosecuted by
the means of diplomatic protection, which meant that the victim of a
wrong had to demonstrate the failure of local remedies; denial of justice
thus slipped into a usage in which it was confused with the precondition
for raising any number of delicts.
These confusions have dissipated. We know that there are many international wrongs apart from denial of justice. El Triunfo today would be a
case of contract breach, or of expropriation, and the claim would stand or
fall without a word of denial of justice. Direct access to international
jurisdictions without the diplomatic espousal of claims has made it unnecessary to resort to fictions to demonstrate exhaustion of local remedies. The
alleged wrong is not a denial of justice. There is no need to allege that
national courts prevented a remedy by the means of a denial of justice; it is
sufficient to invoke their simple refusal to grant the remedy. (No matter
how perfectly a national court system administers a claim of expropriation, its decision is subject to plenary international review to the extent
that the matter includes the breach of an international duty.) If the alleged
wrong is a denial of justice, as we shall now see in Chapter 5, exhaustion is
required as a matter of substance, and this is true even if it has been
waived or dispensed with as a matter of procedure.
99
5
Exhaustion of local remedies and denial
of justice
The case for exhaustion
In Loewen, where the documentation put before the arbitral tribunal was
particularly exhaustive, the final award noted that:
No instance has been drawn to our attention in which an international tribunal
has held a State responsible for a breach of international law constituted by a
lower court decision when there was available an effective and adequate appeal
within the State’s legal system.1
The absence of such instances is unsurprising. International law
attaches state responsibility for judicial action only if it is shown that
there was no reasonably available national mechanism to correct the
challenged action. In the case of denial of justice, finality is thus a
substantive element of the international delict. States are held to an
obligation to provide a fair and efficient system of justice, not to an undertaking that there will never be an instance of judicial misconduct. Writing
as rapporteur to the International Law Commission, James Crawford
put it this way:
an aberrant decision by an official lower in the hierarchy, which is capable of
being reconsidered, does not of itself amount to an unlawful act.2
1
Loewen, 26 June 2003, at para. 154. The proposition articulated in the quoted paragraph
should be understood as limited by the context of the claim of denial of justice. As a
general statement of international responsibility, it is likely too wide.
2
International Law Commission (Crawford), Second Report on State Responsibility,
UN Doc. A/CN.4/498 (1999) at para. 75. Commenting on the ILC Draft Articles in
1998, the UK expressed itself as follows: ‘Corruption in an inferior court would not
100
Exhaustion of local remedies and denial of justice
The correctness of this proposition is not open to doubt. Freeman
traced it back to the medieval regime of reprisals, which were considered
lawful when there was, as da Legnano wrote in 1360,3 ‘a failure of remedy
(propter defectum remedii) arising from the neglect of those who govern’. It
followed that the injured alien could look to external force (including his
own, with the permission of his prince) only if he was unable to obtain
reparation from the local sovereign. By the twentieth century, Freeman
wrote, this had been transformed into ‘the rule that local remedies must
first be exhausted’.4 He cited numerous precedents5 and made the following sensible observation:
Ample protection against arbitrary violations of the local law will normally be
afforded within the State itself by the conventional means of appeal to a superior
court. Ruling improperly on evidence, erroneously charging a jury, exceeding
the decorous limits of judicial restraint with prejudicial effects for one of the
parties (such as openly insulting the claimant’s attorney before the jury), emotionally addressing the jurymen with the aim of kindling their hostility, and the
like will usually find rectification in the wisdom of the reviewing bench.6
Against this background, Freeman gave the following reasons for the
perpetuation of the rule7:
*
*
*
*
the outcome of national appeals may make international action
unnecessary;
facts that emerge in the course of such appeals may deter international action on behalf of the aliens;
‘the presumption of uniformity between national institutions and the
requirements of international law’ is overcome only ‘by a denial of
justice against which there is no effective appeal’;
inter-state friction is lessened;
violate [the duty to provide a fair and efficient system of justice] if redress were speedily
available in a higher court’, International Law Commission, Draft Articles on State
Responsibility, Comments and Observations Received from Governments, UN Doc.
A/CN.4/488 (1998) at p. 69. See also the Green, Burn, The Ada, Smith and Blumhardt cases
rendered by Umpire Thornton in US v. Mexico cases, Moore Arbitrations at p. 3139 and
following, as well as The Mechanic (Corwin v. Venezuela), ibid. at p. 3210. The Jennings,
Laughland & Co. award (US v. Mexico), ibid. 3135, at p. 3136 declared: ‘The Umpire does
not conceive that any government can thus be made responsible for the misconduct of
an inferior judicial officer when no attempt has been made to obtain justice from a
higher court.’
3
Tractatus de Bello, de Repraesalus et de Duello, ch. CXXIII, quoted in Freeman at p. 55.
4
Freeman at p. 56. 5 Ibid. at p. 403 et seq. 6 Ibid. at pp. 291–292 (notes omitted).
7
Ibid. at pp. 416–417.
101
Denial of Justice in International Law
*
‘the gravity and exceptional character of international responsibility’ is
respected by limiting claims to those ‘really worthy of consideration’.
Moreover, as Nsongurua Udombana, a Nigerian scholar, has more
recently pointed out:
local remedies are normally quicker, cheaper, and more effective than international ones. They can be more effective in the sense that an appellate court can reverse
the decision of a lower court, whereas the decision of an international organ does not have that effect,
although it will engage the international responsibility of the state concerned.8
All of these reasons, however, militate in favour of the exhaustion rule
with respect to all claims of state responsibility, not only in connection
with claims of denial of justice. Indeed, the exhaustion requirement has
long been established as a general principle of international law.9 As such,
it is applicable to claims presented by diplomatic protection under a treaty
even if it is not expressly mentioned therein.10
Loewen and the problem of waiver
A problem then arises by reason of the fact that waivers of the exhaustion
requirement have been made in many treaties. International arbitrations
8
Nsongurua Udombana, ‘So Far, So Fair: The Local Remedies Rule in the
Jurisprudence of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights’, (2003) 97
AJIL 1, at p. 9 (emphasis added). W. Michael Reisman was able to encompass all of
these considerations in a single sentence: ‘The domestic remedy rule is founded on
principles of economy, localization of delict and remedy, and good faith’, in Nullity and
Revision: The Review and Enforcement of International Judgments and Awards (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1971), at p. 364.
9
Panevezys–Saldutiskis Railway (Estonia v. Lithuania), (1939) PCIJ, Series A/B, No. 76, 3; see
generally the Separate Opinion of Judge Sir Hersch Lauterpacht in Certain Norwegian
Loans (France v. Norway), 1957 ICJ Reports 9, at pp. 34–66, A. A. Cançado Trindade,
The Application of the Rule of Exhaustion of Local Remedies in International Law: Its Rationale in the
International Protection of Individual Rights (Cambridge University Press, 1983). (The
application of the principle to deny admissibility in Panevezys–Saldutiskis Railway is,
however, open to considerable doubt; Judge Erich’s analysis in his dissent, at
pp. 52–53, seems a far more realistic assessment, consistent with the approach of
international tribunals before and since, from Robert E. Brown to ELSI; accord.,
Reisman, Nullity, at p. 369.)
10
‘If there is a positive utility to the exhaustion rule – and it is submitted that there is – an
argument for automatic waiver other than through an express compromise is not
persuasive’, Reisman, Nullity, at p. 365, n. 18. This doctrinal view was given
jurisprudential confirmation in Elettronica Sicula SpA (ELSI) (US v. Italy), 1989 ICJ
Reports 15, at para. 50: ‘the Chamber finds itself unable to accept that an important
principle of customary international law should be held to have been tacitly dispensed
with, in the absence of any words making clear an intention to do so’.
102
Exhaustion of local remedies and denial of justice
governed by the ICSID Convention are a salient example. In ICSID
arbitrations, the exhaustion rule does not apply unless the respondent
state made an express ‘condition of its consent’ to that effect when
adhering to the Convention. Hundreds of bilateral investment treaties
have also opened the door to arbitration without the exhaustion
requirement.
Is the consequence of such waivers that the requirement does not apply
to claims of denial of justice? If not, why should such claims be different
from any other claims of breaches of international law?
The Loewen tribunal found itself struggling with this issue. As we shall
see in the section on ‘Fundamental breaches of due process’ in Chapter 7,
the arbitrators concluded that ‘by any standard of measurement’ the trial
of which the claimant complained ‘was a disgrace’.11 That conclusion was
not enough to give rise to international responsibility; it was necessary to
determine whether the grievance nevertheless failed for want of adequate pursuit of appeal. The arbitrators found that Loewen could not
succeed for want of a demonstration that ‘no reasonably available and
adequate remedy under United States municipal law’ was open to it.
Thus the claim was bound to fail for failure to pursue local remedies;
indeed the award reads as though the burden was on the complainant to
disprove the existence of reasonably available remedies.12
Loewen arose under NAFTA, Article 1121(1)(b) of which requires any
claimant who wishes to bring international arbitration to waive its ‘right
to initiate or continue before any administrative tribunal or court . . . any
proceedings’ relating to the grievance. Loewen argued that this provision
implicitly eliminated the exhaustion requirement. The US government,
according to the tribunal, ‘appears to acknowledge . . . that the Article
relaxes the local remedies rule to a partial but limited extent, without
defining or otherwise indicating what that extent is or may be’.13
So the arbitrators needed to distinguish claims of denial of justice from
other claims brought before international tribunals. They therefore
insisted that the former requires respect for a ‘finality’ rule which is
substantive in character, whereas other claims are subject to a merely
procedural rule of exhaustion which governs their admissibility. Indeed,
the award studiously avoids using the word ‘exhaustion’ with respect to
11
Loewen, 26 June 2003, at para. 119.
Ibid. at para. 2. This finding – like most of the award – was obiter ; the case was dismissed
by reference to a threshold issue of standing: failure to satisfy a ‘diversity of nationality’
requirement under the North American Free Trade Agreement.
13
Ibid. at paras. 145–146.
12
103
Denial of Justice in International Law
claims of denial of justice, as though paraphrases, such as ‘challenged
through the judicial process’14 or that ‘the judicial process be continued to
the highest level’,15 might suffice to create a special category. Thus it
seems – for the award is not explicit on this score – that the waiver of the
general exhaustion rule should not be considered to achieve waiver of the
special finality requirement that applies with respect to claims of denial of
justice.
This may have been a convenient way to reach the desired outcome.
The reasons summarised by Freeman remain valid today, as does the
point that local appellate bodies are in a position to reverse illegitimate
decisions. They all militate in favour of the exhaustion of national remedies before a claim of denial of justice may be internationalised. But does
not each one of them equally militate in favour of exhaustion with respect
to international responsibility for all wrongs imputable to a state? And
who is to say that sovereign states do not have the right to waive the
exhaustion requirement in whatever context they choose? There must be
some defensible foundation for distinguishing claims of denial of justice; it
is no answer to invent labels like substantive or finality and to declare
arbitrarily that they define a higher threshold of admissibility.
Judge Jiménez de Aréchaga may have been searching for just such a
distinction when he wrote that it is:
an essential condition of a State being held responsible for a judicial decision in
breach of municipal law that the decision must be a decision of a court of last resort,
all remedies having been exhausted.16
This makes sense. If municipal legislation violates international law, there
is no need to raise a claim of denial of justice; the legislature’s wrongful act
is imputable to the state as a specific breach of the relevant duty under
international law. If it is not in itself violative of international law, it may
nevertheless be interpreted or applied by a court in a manner that contravenes international law. But such a misinterpretation or misapplication of
the national law can hardly be considered to be an expression of the
minimally adequate legal system which international law requires states
to maintain until it is confirmed in the manner which is part and parcel of
the system – i.e. including ordinary and reasonably available forms of
14
16
Ibid. at para. 159. 15 Ibid. at para. 161.
E. Jiménez de Aréchaga, ‘International Law in the Past Third of a Century’ (1978) 159
Recueil des cours, vol. I, p. 278, at p. 282 (emphasis added).
104
Exhaustion of local remedies and denial of justice
appeal.17 Therefore there is no transgression unless there has been at least
an attempt to take the matter to the highest level.
So far so good, but it is well short of a complete answer. Many if not
most claims of denial of justice – including the one raised in Loewen –
allege that the initial trial immediately violated international law because
it was conducted, as Loewen’s was found to have been, in a manner falling
short of international standards. The complainant would therefore contend that it is unnecessary to show, in Jiménez de Aréchaga’s phrase, ‘a
breach of municipal law’. Why should waiver of the exhaustion of remedies not open the door to an immediate international claim?
When drafting its final award, the Loewen tribunal had to confront the
fact that its earlier jurisdictional decision had contained the following
passage:
the rule of judicial finality is no different from the local remedies rule. Its purpose is
to ensure that the State where the violation occurred should have an opportunity
to redress it by its own means, within the framework of its own domestic legal
system.18
Now faced with the problem that the waiver of one thing should
logically imply the waiver of whatever is ‘no different from’ it, the
arbitrators had to backtrack. ‘This statement requires qualification’,
they wrote, explaining that the finality rule ‘means that this requirement
and the local remedies rule, though they may be similar in content, serve
two different purposes’.19
This is rather perplexing. How can the assertion that a rule exists in
itself ‘mean’ that it serves a different purpose from another rule? Absent
any elucidation in the award, one would need mystical powers to divine
the ‘different purposes’ invoked by the arbitrators. After all, in cases
where the exhaustion requirement has been waived, ICSID arbitrators
17
‘[W]here the action complained of is a breach of the local law but not initially of
international law, the international responsibility of the State is not engaged by the
action complained of: it can only arise out of a subsequent act of the State constituting a
denial of justice to the injured party seeking a remedy for the original action of which
he complains’, J. E. S. Fawcett, ‘The Exhaustion of Local Remedies: Substance or
Procedure?’ (1954) 31 BYIL 452, at p. 456.‘ Here the local remedies rule operates as a
substantive bar to an international claim as no claim arises until a denial of justice can
be shown.’ International Law Commission (Dugard), Second Report on Diplomatic
Protection, UN Doc. A/CN.4/514 (2001) at p. 31, para. 62.
18
Loewen, 5 January 2001, at para. 71 (emphasis added).
19
Loewen, 26 June 2003, at para. 159.
105
Denial of Justice in International Law
have accepted as admissible a claim of expropriation by way of the armed
take-over of a hotel by ‘up to perhaps two dozen’ uniformed men acting at
the behest of an Indonesian army pension fund even though there had been
no attempt to achieve redress through the Indonesian courts – indeed in the
absence of any formal decree of expropriation.20 Similarly, a claim for
failure to ensure ‘full protection and security’ on the occasion of an antiguerrilla raid by counter-insurgency forces who destroyed a shrimp farm
was held admissible without giving the state the opportunity to offer redress
by local remedies.21 Yet again, another investor successfully pursued an
expropriation claim before ICSID in the absence of any decree to that
effect, on the basis of a finding of fact that the state acted as though there
had been an expropriation, notably through an administrative memorandum which spoke of the relevant enterprise as being under state control,
even though there had been no judicial challenge.22 There is no mystery:
these claimants did not have to give local courts an opportunity to consider
their grievances before seizing international tribunals because there had
been a waiver of exhaustion of such remedies. So why should the result not
be the same when a trial court has disgraced itself?
Nor is it any answer to observe, as the Loewen tribunal did with a bow to
the International Court of Justice’s judgment in ELSI,23 that an important
principle of international law should not readily be deemed to have been
‘tacitly dispensed with’.24 The exhaustion rule is indubitably an ‘important principle’, yet it is unambiguously and routinely waived in investment
treaties, as well as in the investment chapter of the North American Free
Trade Agreement. The difficulty remains: is there something which
causes the exhaustion requirement to be more inalienable with respect
to denial of justice than with respect to other claims?
It is difficult to resist the impression that the arbitrators regretted that
their previous jurisdictional decision (decided, it should be noted, when
one of the members of the tribunal was a different arbitrator) had asserted
that the rule of finality ‘is no different from the local remedies rule’, since
that assertion does not sit comfortably with the fact that they ultimately
determined to deal with the matter not as an issue of admissibility, but as
20
Amco Asia Corp. et al. v. Indonesia, award, 20 November 1984, 1 ICSID Reports 413
(Foighel, Rubin, Goldman (presiding)); Amco II.
21
Asian Agricultural Products Ltd v. Sri Lanka, award, 27 June 1990, 4 ICSID Reports 245
(Goldman, Asante, El-Kosheri (presiding)).
22
Benvenuti and Bonfant srl v. Congo, 8 August 1980, 1 ICSID Reports 330 (Bystricky,
Razafindralambo, Troller (presiding)).
23
US v. Italy 1989 ICJ Reports 15. 24 Loewen, 26 June 2003, at para. 160.
106
Exhaustion of local remedies and denial of justice
one of the merits. The local remedies rule is, of course, traditionally
considered as a matter of admissibility.25
The Loewen tribunal’s final attempt to explain its conclusion was thus to
wax teleological. If the exhaustion requirement were held waived:
it would encourage resort to NAFTA tribunals rather than resort to the appellate
courts and review processes of the host State, an outcome which would seem
surprising, having regard to the sophisticated legal systems of the NAFTA
Parties. Such an outcome would have the effect of making a State potentially
liable for NAFTA violations when domestic appeal or review, if pursued, might
have avoided any liability on the part of the State. Further, it is unlikely that the
Parties to NAFTA would have wished to encourage recourse to NAFTA arbitration at the expense of domestic appeal or review when, in the general run of
cases, domestic appeal or review would offer more wide-ranging review as they
are not confined to breaches of international law.26
But this will be recognised as nothing more than a restatement of the
reasons summarised by Freeman, and an incomplete one at that. Once
again, the explanation does not point to a distinguishing feature to justify
that other claims not be subject to the same threshold.
Ultimately, we are left with this somewhat anticlimactic pronouncement
(as though the arbitrators felt that the fact of their having tried so valiantly to
come up with a justification entitled them to credit for having achieved it):
One thing is, however, reasonably clear about Article 1121 and that is that it says
nothing expressly about the requirement that, in the context of a judicial violation of international law, the judicial process be continued to the highest level.27
One can only wonder why at this point the arbitrators found the matter
only ‘reasonably’ clear; it is as clear as day that Article 1121 breathes not a
word of the specific case of responsibility for judicial acts. They could
have said that it was perfectly clear; the response would still be: ‘so what?’
Exhaustion as a substantive requirement
of denial of justice
Yet the Loewen tribunal was surely right. Freeman’s list of reasons are
intuitively more compelling with respect to claims of denial of justice than
25
Indeed Article 44 of the ILC’s Articles on State Responsibility, which articulates the
local remedies rule, is entitled ‘Admissibility of claims’: ILC Draft Articles on
Responsibility of States for internationally wrongful acts, UN Doc. A/56/10 (2001).
26
Loewen, 26 June 2003, at para. 162. 27 Ibid. at para. 161.
107
Denial of Justice in International Law
in connection with other allegations of international wrongs. We must, it
seems, try again to find a rationale for the arbitrators’ conclusion. To
return to first principles, the question is this: even when exhaustion is
otherwise not required, is the international delict of denial of justice,
unlike other violations of international law, consummated only after the
ordinary and reasonably accessible appeals process has run its course?
To repeat: states may, and do, enter into treaties that provide for direct
access by foreigners to international tribunals without first having to
exhaust local remedies. Such waivers give foreigners the assurance that
internationally wrongful conduct will not be swept under the rug
indefinitely.
In the particular case of denial of justice, however, claims will not
succeed unless the victim has indeed exhausted municipal remedies, or
unless there is an explicit waiver of a type yet to be invented. (An ad hoc
compromis might do.) This is neither a paradox nor an aberration, for it is in
the very nature of the delict that a state is judged by the final product – or
at least a sufficiently final product – of its administration of justice. A denial
of justice is not consummated by the decision of a court of first instance.
Having sought to rely on national justice, the foreigner cannot complain
that its operations have been delictual until he has given it scope to
operate, including by the agency of its ordinary corrective functions.
Perhaps the strongest argument for this special treatment of claims
of denial of justice is that it avoids interference with the fundamental
principle that states should to the greatest extent possible be free to
organise their national legal systems as they see fit. Conscious of the
public demand for greater speed, they may wish to provide for a
great number of local courts even if they do not have the resources to
staff them with the highest-quality jurists. They may institute accelerated procedures on the understanding that most litigants prefer rough
justice now to perfect justice in their dotage. They may allow lay
volunteers to sit on commercial tribunals of first instance. The state
can make such compromises because of its confidence in its appellate
mechanisms. If aliens are allowed to bypass those mechanisms and bring
international claims for denial of justice on the basis of alleged wrongdoing by the justice of the peace of any neighbourhood, international
law would find itself intruding intolerably into internal affairs. For a
foreigner’s international grievance to proceed as a claim of denial of
justice, the national system must have been tested. Its perceived failings
cannot constitute an international wrong unless it has been given a
chance to correct itself.
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Exhaustion of local remedies and denial of justice
When on the other hand the alleged delict has been committed by
officials who are not carrying out a function susceptible to judicial review,
the issue is simply whether their acts are imputable to the state or not. If
so, responsibility for the delict is in principle extant even in the absence of
any attempt to seise a higher authority. Claimants are of course unlikely to
pursue international claims against a state for the misdeeds of lower-level
officials; overwhelming common sense will command that an attempt be
made to go over their heads to administrative superiors before engaging
the expense of launching an international claim. (A well-advised potential
claimant will also be aware that the quantum of recovery may be compromised in the absence of any attempt to mitigate.)
But a trial judge who misconducts himself simply does not commit a fully
constituted international delict imputable to the state. States do not have an
international obligation to ensure that no individual judge is ever guilty of a
miscarriage of justice. The obligation is to establish and maintain a system
which does not deny justice; the system is the whole pyramid.28
28
The failure to pursue local remedies may be given weight in assessing the substantive
justification for claims other than denial of justice. In contrast to the three cases
involving respectively Indonesia (Amco Asia et al. v. Indonesia, 1 ICSID Reports 376),
Sri Lanka (Asian Agricultural Products Ltd v. Sri Lanka, 4 ICSID Reports 245), and Congo
(Brazzaville) (Benvenuti and Bonfant srl v. Congo, 1 ICSID Reports 330), see Generation Ukraine
Inc. v. Ukraine, award, 16 September 2003, (2005) 44 ILM 404 (Salpius, Voss, Paulsson
(presiding)), where the lack of attempts to seek local redress persuaded the arbitrators
that there had in fact been no expropriation: ‘20.30 . . . it is not enough for an investor
to seize upon an act of maladministration, no matter how low the level of the relevant
governmental authority; to abandon his investment without any effort at overturning
the administrative fault; and thus to claim an international delict on the theory that
there had been an uncompensated virtual expropriation. In such instances, an international tribunal may deem that the failure to seek redress from national authorities
disqualifies the international claim, not because there is a requirement of exhaustion of
local remedies but because the very reality of conduct tantamount to expropriation is
doubtful in the absence of a reasonable – not necessarily exhaustive – effort by the
investor to obtain correction . . . 20.33 No act or omission of the Kyiv City State
Administration during this period, whether cumulatively or in isolation,
transcends the threshold for an indirect expropriation. This Tribunal does not exercise
the function of an administrative review body to ensure that municipal agencies
perform their tasks diligently, conscientiously or efficiently. That function is within
the proper domain of domestic courts and tribunals that are cognisant of the minutiae
of the applicable regulatory regime. In the circumstances of this case, the conduct cited
by the Claimant was never challenged before the domestic courts of Ukraine. More
precisely, the Claimant did not attempt to compel the Kyiv City State Administration to
rectify the alleged omissions in its administrative management of the Parkview Project by
instituting proceedings in the Ukrainian courts. There is, of course, no formal obligation
upon the Claimant to exhaust local remedies before resorting to ICSID arbitration
109
Denial of Justice in International Law
A tacit recognition of this fundamental element of denial of justice was
provided by Feldman v. Mexico,29 a case which arose under NAFTA and
was decided by an ICSID Additional Facility Tribunal. The arbitrators
quoted with approval the reasoning expressed in Azinian v. Mexico to the
effect that ‘a governmental authority surely cannot be faulted for acting in
a manner validated by its own courts unless the courts themselves are
disavowed at the international level’. Faced with a claimant who argued
that unfavourable regulatory actions of the Ministry of Finance and
Public Credit (in alleged disregard of both a Supreme Court precedent
and a specific agreement made with the claimant) constituted denial of
justice, the arbitral tribunal had to go further than Azinian, where there
was no challenge to the relevant Mexican court decisions. In rejecting the
claim, the Feldman award noted that Mexican judicial and administrative
procedures were at all relevant times open to the claimant, that he had
indeed won one such court application to the Supreme Court, and that
court review of the adverse regulatory decisions was available.30
The proposed Article 12 of the Second Report on Diplomatic
Protection prepared for the International Law Commission by John
Dugard affirms that the local remedies rule is a procedural precondition
to the prosecution of an international claim, and not a substantive norm.
This proposition seems consistent with the views expressed by Judge
Lauterpacht in Norwegian Loans,31 but contrary to those of the first
Lauterpacht lecturer, Judge Schwebel, in the ELSI case.32
For present purposes, it is possible, and indeed right, to sidestep
this controversy (which is not a Lauterpacht–Schwebel debate, but a
notorious matter of discussion among international legal scholars33).
pursuant to the BIT [Ukraine–United States Bilateral Investment Treaty]. Nevertheless,
in the absence of any per se violation of the BIT discernible from the relevant conduct
of the Kyiv City State Administration, the only possibility in this case for the series
of complaints relating to highly technical matters of Ukrainian planning law to be
transformed into a BIT violation would have been for the Claimant to be denied justice
before the Ukrainian courts in a bona fide attempt to resolve these technical matters.’
(Emphasis in the original. Compare Oil Field of Texas, Inc. v. Iran, award, 8 October 1986, 12
Iran–US Claims Tribunal Report 308, where the finding of expropriation depended
in significant part on ‘the Claimant’s impossibility to challenge the Court order in Iran’,
ibid. at para. 43.)
29
Award, 16 December 2002, 7 ICSID Reports 339. 30 Ibid. at para. 140.
31
France v. Norway 1957 ICJ Reports 9, at p. 41.
32
US v. Italy 1989 ICJ Reports 15, at pp. 115–116.
33
Judge Roberto Ago once compiled a bibliography of the different schools of thought:
ILC Yearbook 1977, vol. II, A/CN.4/SER.A/1977/Add.1(78.v.2) at 135–137. De
Visscher had no hesitation in declaring the exhaustion requirement to be a règle de
procédure. He then wrote, at 421: ‘It affects less the existence of responsibility than the
110
Exhaustion of local remedies and denial of justice
The proposition advanced is that the very definition of the delict of
denial of justice encompasses the notion of exhaustion of local remedies.
There can be no denial before exhaustion.34 (To put it more precisely,
the offending state must be given a reasonable opportunity to correct
actions which otherwise would ripen into delicts.) The aptness or otherwise of Dugard’s proposed Article 12, as it applies to other international
delicts, is simply hors propos. To take one step further: denial of justice is
by definition to be distinguished from situations where international
wrongs materialise before exhaustion of local remedies; there is no
impediment to perceiving, in accordance with Dugard’s report, that
exhaustion of local remedies with respect to such wrongs is a waivable
procedural precondition.35
This analysis impels us to revert to the subject of Calvo Clauses. The
fundamental effect of such Clauses, generally accepted as such since the
conditions for initiating the claim.’ The word less is uncomfortable; if the matter truly
was so clear to de Visscher, he might have expressed himself in a more absolute
manner, and written not. At any rate, the quoted sentence would get a claimant
nowhere with respect to a denial of justice; there is no way to ‘initiate a claim’ which
has not matured, i.e. the elements proving ‘the existence of responsibility’ are not
extant before the national system has been given an opportunity for correction.
The exhaustion rule adopted by the ILC Articles on the Responsibility of States for
Internationally Wrongful Acts in 2001 appears in Article 44(b), which is entitled
‘Admissibility of claims’. (It refers to the non-exhaustion of any available and effective
local remedy.) The commentary does not, however, suggest that exhaustion is purely
procedural; James Crawford, The International Law Commission’s Articles on State
Responsibility: Introduction, Text and Commentaries (Cambridge University Press, 2002), at
pp. 264–265.
34
The Mondev award was therefore in error when it asserted that ‘under NAFTA it is not
true that the denial of justice rule and the exhaustion of local remedies rule ‘‘are
interlocking and inseparable’’’. Mondev at para. 96 (quoting C. Eagleton, The
Responsibility of States in International Law (New York University Press, 1928), at p. 113).
35
It is possible that the actions of a lower court may breach international obligations
under a treaty. Jiménez de Aréchaga noted in 1968 that ‘State responsibility for acts of
the Judiciary does not exhaust itself in the concept of denial of justice’, in ‘International
Responsibility’, in Max Sørensen (ed.), Manual of Public International Law (London:
Macmillan, 1968), at p. 555. For example, a treaty may contain promises of ‘fair and
equitable treatment’ which are held not to be confined to matters covered by the
customary law of denial of justice; breaches of such promises may not require the
exhaustion of local remedies. Or a treaty may be held to contain promises of
‘transparency’ the breach of which is consummated by a lower court. (The example
is suggested by the controversy engendered by the Metalclad case; see Metalclad Corp. v.
Mexico, award, 30 August 2000, 5 ICSID Reports 209 (Civiletti, Siqueiros, Lauterpacht
(presiding)), and its partial annulment in British Columbia, Mexico v. Metalclad
Corporation, 2 May 2001, ibid. at 236. Such grievances must find their basis in the lex
specialis of the treaty; for want of the exhaustion of local remedies, they have not
matured as claims of denial of justice.
111
Denial of Justice in International Law
North American Dredging case,36 is to deny to international tribunals the
power to try (or review) dispositions of national law.37 Conduct which is
alleged to generate immediate international responsibility may of course
be brought to such international forums as may have jurisdiction ratione
personae. But claims that arise because of the manner in which the national
system has administered justice do not fall within the scope of authority of
international adjudicators until that system has finally disposed of the
claim submitted to it, and such an international wrong is not consummated until its remedies have been exhausted. Our conclusion is in
harmony with the operation of the Calvo Clause. Put another way,
Loewen is consistent in principle with North American Dredging.
The qualification of reasonableness
In the Montano case discussed at greater length in Chapter 6, the Umpire
of the US–Peruvian Claims Commission (General Herran) rejected the
US Government’s objection of non-exhaustion of local remedies and
went on to uphold a significant Peruvian claim. He wrote notably:
The obligation of a stranger to exhaust the remedies which nations have for
obtaining justice, before soliciting the protection of his government, ought to be
understood in a rational manner, that such obligation does not make delusive the
rights of the foreigner.38
The Peruvian claimant, Esteban Montano, had obtained a federal judgment in his favour, but it remained unenforced due to the negligence of the
marshal charged with its execution in California. The US Government
apparently considered that the claimant should now lodge a complaint
against the marshal, and thus seemed to be saying, in General Herran’s
ironic phrase, that ‘what Montano gained by the sentence was the right to
bring forward another complaint’. The Umpire was satisfied that ‘the
claimant had exhausted the ordinary means of obtaining justice’.
36
See the section on ‘Modern political realities’ in Chapter 2.
The well-informed reader will not miss the broad parallel with the effect of contractual
forum clauses analysed in the cases of SGS Société Générale de Surveillance S.A. v. Pakistan,
decision on jurisdiction, 6 August 2003, 8 ICSID Reports 406 (Faurès, Thomas, Feliciano
(presiding)) and SGS Société Générale de Surveillance S.A. v. Philippines, decision on jurisdiction, 29 January 2004, 8 ICSID Reports 518 (Crawford, Crivellaro, El-Kosheri
(presiding)).
38
Peru v. US, Moore, Arbitrations 1630 at p. 1637.
37
112
Exhaustion of local remedies and denial of justice
Similarly, in the exotic saga of the high-stakes feud between a French
lawyer and entrepreneur named Antoine Fabiani and his Venezuelan
in-laws, the Roncayolos, the international tribunal embodied in the
President of the Swiss Federation noted that in the light of a series of
‘dénégations de justice notoires’ it would be unacceptable to ask of Fabiani that
he must then ask for a ruling about his claim of denial of justice – from the
very courts ‘of which for years he had fruitlessly demanded the execution of
an irreproachable award . . . notwithstanding that the higher supervising
administrative and judicial authorities had been put on notice of the
illegalities committed’.39
The victim of a denial of justice is not required to pursue improbable
remedies. Nor is he required to contrive indirect or extravagant applications beyond the ordinary path of a frontal attempt to have the judgment
by which he was unjustly treated set aside, or to be granted a trial he was
denied. This issue is sometimes referred to as one of an exception to the rule
of exhaustion; a more apt expression would be that it is a qualification
necessary to establish the inherent limits of the rule.
Debates concerning the plausibility of a remedy yet to be solicited are
naturally likely to generate serious controversy. Jurisprudence and commentary reflect much hard thinking about the criteria that should properly allow a claimant to consider that his claim of denial of justice is
mature, and thus that he is not required to pursue further local remedies.
The competing suggestions of appropriate criteria are sophisticated and
merit careful attention.
Yet before exposing ourselves to the rarefied atmosphere of this debate,
we may fortify ourselves with the oxygen of a simple guiding proposition,
namely that it must be possible for international adjudicators to examine
the plausibility of the alleged remaining remedy without actually requiring that the claimant try it.
Ultimately, one cannot know whether a remedy would have been
adequate or effective unless one actually seeks to rely on it. If the rule
were so strict as to require an attempt in every case, the supposed
qualification would be wiped out by its very definition; the most remotely
conceivable remedy must be attempted.
No proposed criteria should be adopted if they lead to such an extreme
result. It would imply the abandonment of international review, for it
would be sufficient for a respondent state to assert that some residual
39
Antoine Fabiani (no. 1) (France v. Venezuela), Moore, Arbitrations 4878 at p. 4904 (the
present author’s translation).
113
Denial of Justice in International Law
remedy might still be availing. In Secretary of State Hamilton Fish’s
famous phrase: ‘A claimant in a foreign state is not required to exhaust
justice in such state when there is no justice to exhaust’.40 The ICJ
Chamber which decided the ELSI case gave useful content to this abstraction. In the interest of succinctness, it suffices to cite the introduction of
Judge Schwebel’s dissenting opinion, where he sets out his agreement with
the judgment in this ‘paramount’ respect:
the Judgment applies a rule of reason in its interpretation of the reach of the
requirement of the exhaustion of local remedies. It holds not that every possible
local remedy must have been exhausted to satisfy the local remedies rule but
that, where in substance local remedies have been exhausted, that suffices to
meet the requirements of the rule even if it may be that a variation on the
pursuit of local remedies in the particular case was not in fact played out. It has
of course long been of the essence of the rule of exhaustion of local remedies
that local remedies need not be exhausted where there are no effective remedies to exhaust. It may be said that the Chamber has done no more than to
reaffirm this established element of the rule. In fact it has reaffirmed it, but in
doing so the Judgment makes a contribution to the elucidation of the local
remedies rule by indicating that, where the substance of the issues of a case has
been definitively litigated in the courts of a State, the rule does not require that
those issues also have been litigated by the presentation of every relevant legal
argument which any municipal forum might have been able to pass upon,
however unlikely in practice the possibilities of reaching another result were.
The United States of America submitted that the claims brought by it were
admissible since ‘all reasonable’ local remedies had been exhausted; in substance, the Chamber agreed, and rightly so. Its holding thus confines certain
prior constructions of the reach of the rule of exhaustion of local remedies to a
sensible limit.41
40
J. B. Moore, Digest of International Law (8 vols., Washington, DC: US Government
Printing Office, 1906), vol. VI, at p. 677.
41
US v. Italy 1989 ICJ Reports 15, at p. 94. Italy had argued that Raytheon, the aggrieved
US corporation, could have brought an action founded on Article 2043 of the Italian
Civil Code, which generally requires the reparation of ‘wrongful damages’ caused by
wilfulness or fault. Italy argued that this provision had been frequently and successfully
invoked by individuals against the Italian State. Accordingly, the unsuccessful attempts
of ELSI’s trustee in bankruptcy (pursued to the level of the Court of Cassation) to
obtain an indemnity on account of an allegedly illegal requisition by the Mayor of
Palermo of plant and machinery, leading to the insolvency of the company, was argued
not to constitute sufficient exhaustion by its US parent corporation. Rejecting this
argument, the ICJ Chamber stated that it appeared ‘impossible to deduce . . . what the
attitude of the Italian courts would have been’; Italy had not discharged the burden ‘to
show, as a matter of fact, the existence of a remedy which was open to the United States
stockholders and which they failed to employ’ (ibid. at p. 47).
114
Exhaustion of local remedies and denial of justice
There can be no hesitation if the international tribunal is satisfied as a
matter of fact that theoretically available local remedies are incapable of
altering a decision, e.g. in the face of an executive order forbidding suits
against the treasury42 or in the face of executive subversion of judicial
authority.43 Michael Reisman has also suggested that the pendency of
internal judicial proceedings should not inhibit international actions if the
former are based on internationally unlawful legislation; he gave the
example of the South African apartheid government’s Terrorism Act.44
The plausibility of the remedy posited by the respondent US
Government was critical to the outcome of the 2003 award in Loewen,
where the claim was rejected on the merits for failure to show ‘that
Loewen had no reasonably available and adequate remedy under
United States municipal law in respect of the matters of which it complains’.45 (To be accurate, the award states that such would have been the
claimants’ fate had it been able to overcome the issue of standing which
doomed their case at any rate, namely the failure of a ‘diversity of
nationality’ requirement under the North American Free Trade
Agreement.46) Before we revert to this remarkable case, some issues of
principle merit consideration.
The question of futile remedies that arises with respect to denial of
justice is analogous to the one arising in connection with the obligation to
exhaust local remedies before seeking diplomatic protection. The Second
Report on Diplomatic Protection to the ILC proposed a text requiring
recourse to ‘all available local legal remedies’, defined as those ‘which are
of right open to natural or legal persons before judicial or administrative
courts or authorities whether ordinary or special’.47 In subsequent
debates within the ILC, the point was made that the remedies in question
must also be adequate or effective. In due course, the Third Report proposed
alternative negative formulations, namely that local remedies need not be
exhausted if they are:
42
Ruden (US v. Peru), Moore, Arbitrations 1653, at p. 1655.
As in the Robert E. Brown case (US v. Great Britain, VI RIAA 120), discussed in John
Dugard, ‘Chief Justice versus President: Does the Ghost of Brown v. Leyds NO Still
Haunt Our Judges?’ De Rebus (September 1981), where the South African President
overruled the courts and ultimately dismissed judges unwilling to swear that they would
not review the constitutionality of decrees.
44
Reisman, Nullity, at p. 365. 45 26 June 2003, at para. 2.
46
Ibid. at para. 237. 47 ILC, Second Report on Diplomatic Protection at p. 3.
43
115
Denial of Justice in International Law
(1)
(2)
(3)
‘obviously futile’, or
‘offer no reasonable prospect of success’, or
‘provide no reasonable possibility of an effective remedy’.
The Special Rapporteur’s reason for proposing negative formulations –
i.e. exceptions – relate to his analysis of the burden of proof:
the burden of proof in respect of the availability and effectiveness of local
remedies will in most circumstances be on different parties. The respondent
State will be required to prove that local remedies are available, while the burden
of proof will be on the claimant State to show that such remedies are ineffective
or futile.48
The relevance in terms of denial of justice is direct and evident. (And what
goes for ‘the claimant state’ in espousal cases also goes for any other
claimant.)
It is a matter for determination by the international forum, on a caseby-case basis, whether a remedy is reasonably available, in terms of either
adequacy or efficacy. Unilateral affirmations should not be given conclusive effect, whether they are made by the claimant (typically on the
basis of advice from jurisconsultants) or by the respondent state. To
proceed otherwise would violate the principle of equality of the parties
before the international forum. The following pronouncement of the
Permanent Court of International Justice should therefore be read with
caution:
The question whether or not the Lithuanian Courts have jurisdiction to entertain
a particular suit depends on Lithuanian law and is one on which the Lithuanian
Courts alone can pronounce a final decision . . . Until it has been clearly shown
that [they] have no jurisdiction . . . the Court cannot accept the contention . . . that the rule as to the exhaustion of local remedies does not apply.49
The notion expressed by the phrase ‘it has been clearly shown’ should be
read liberally, with the adjunction by any convincing means, rather than as
requiring proof of a formal dismissal.50
48
International Law Commission (Dugard), Third Report on Diplomatic Protection,
UN Doc. A/CN.4/523 (2002), at p. 6, para. 19.
49
Panevezys–Saldutiskis Railway (1939) PCIJ, Series A/B, No. 76, 3, at p. 19.
50
Accord, ILC, Second Report on Diplomatic Protection. Professor Reisman’s sharp
criticism of the PCIJ’s ‘momentary inability to grasp [the issue] in a realistic
manner . . . constitutes an exceptional indiscretion in international jurisprudence’,
Reisman, Nullity, at p. 369, would presumably lead that author to concur emphatically.
116
Exhaustion of local remedies and denial of justice
Still, what exactly needs to be shown? Which of the three formulations
proposed by Dugard carries the weight of authority and the conviction of
sound policy?
The second formulation – offer no reasonable prospect of success – is overly
favourable to the claimant, to such a degree that one may be tempted to
view it as a straw man, placed at one extreme of the debate to provide
favourable contrast with the middle ground. To begin with, it could have
the perverse consequence that a poor case could more easily be brought
before an international forum than more meritorious ones, precisely
because the claimant did not have reasonable prospects of success before
the national courts. For the purposes of the analysis of the maturity of
claims of denial of justice, the availability of local remedies must logically
proceed on the hypothesis that the appeal is factually accurate and legally
well-founded as formulated; for it is only if the international forum can be
persuaded that even a deserving complainant has nowhere to turn that
the denial of justice can be deemed consummated. Finally, this formulation would be a departure from the weight of jurisprudence and authority,
since national legal systems are presumed to function properly. They
should not be found wanting simply because a litigant does not like his
chances and convinces an international tribunal that he is indeed unlikely
to prevail.
The first formulation stands at the other extreme, but does have some
jurisprudential support. Credit for the expression ‘obviously futile’ has
gone to the arbitrator in the Finnish Ships case,51 Justice Algot Bagge of the
Swedish Supreme Court, and so he too is criticised for the perceived
excessive severity of this test. But when one considers what he actually did
and decided, it seems unlikely that Bagge would recognise himself as a
champion of the rule he is said to have authored. What he confronted was
a controversy about the existence of appealable points of law. He examined the points available to the claimant and concluded that they were
‘obviously’ insufficient to justify a revision of the controversial initial
judgment. There is no warrant for concluding that his finding that the
claimant had a compelling case for maturity of his international action
means that equally compelling demonstrations must be made in all cases
before non-exhaustion is excused. His claimant was simply far above the
threshold. Referring to his award in a scholarly publication many years
later, Bagge himself wrote:
51
Finland v. Great Britain, 9 May 1934, III RIAA 1479.
117
Denial of Justice in International Law
it would not be reasonable to require that the private party should spend time
and money on a recourse which in all probability would be futile.52
The present author finds himself fully persuaded to endorse the middle
ground represented by the third formulation: a ‘reasonable possibility of
an effective remedy’. It is directly reproduced from the separate opinion
of Sir Hersch Lauterpacht in the Norwegian Loans case.53 The concept of
reasonable possibility rather than reasonable prospect, coupled with that of an
‘effective remedy’, which focuses on the availability in principle of a
workable mechanism rather than the prediction of an outcome in a
given case, imposes a considerable burden on the claimant, yet does not
require proof of ‘obvious futility’.
In his review of the precedents, Professor Dugard categorised the
circumstances in which local remedies have been found to be ineffective
and futile as follows54:
*
*
*
*
the local courts have no jurisdiction over the dispute;
the national legislation justifying the acts of which the alien complains
will not be reviewed by the courts;55
the local courts are notoriously lacking in independence (Dugard cites
the classic case of Robert E. Brown; in more recent times, one could
imagine Peru under the Fujimori regime as a context in which proof
would be extant; see the Constitutional Court case56);
a consistent and well-established line of precedents adverse to the
alien;
52
A. Bagge, ‘Intervention on the Ground of Damage Caused to Nationals, with
Particular Reference to Exhaustion of Local Remedies and the Rights of
Shareholders’, (1958) 34 BYIL 162, at pp. 166–167 (emphasis added).
53
France v. Norway 1957 ICJ Reports 9, at p. 39.
54
ILC (Dugard), Third Report on Diplomatic Protection at pp. 14–17, paras. 38–44.
55
This category is unlikely to be relevant to claims of denial of justice; the paradigm case
is that of a decree of expropriation, which of itself is not a denial of justice, but a
separate international wrong. As such, it could be susceptible either to direct action
(without the requirement of exhaustion of local remedies) or to diplomatic protection
(subject to an exhaustion requirement which could give rise to a new international
wrong in the case of a denial of justice). See Robert Azinian, et al. v. Mexico, award, 1
November 1998, 5 ICSID Reports 269 (Civiletti, von Wobeser, Paulsson (presiding)).
56
Constitutional Court case (Aguirre Roca, Rey Terry, and Revoredo Marsano v. Peru) (Merits), 31
January 2001, Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Series C, No. 71. Local
applications for the remedy of amparo (constitutional protection) were held illusory
and defective because of the unjustified delay in ruling upon them. See J. M. Pasqualucci,
The Practice and Procedure of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Cambridge University
Press, 2003), at p. 132.
118
Exhaustion of local remedies and denial of justice
*
*
the local courts do not have the competence to grant an appropriate
and adequate remedy;
the absence of an adequate system of judicial protection.
Another instance of pointlessness of further recourse was described by
Östen Undén, sole arbitrator in the Treaty of Neuilly arbitration, as follows:
the rule of exhaustion of local remedies does not apply generally when the act
charged consists of measures taken by the government or by a member of the
government performing his official duties. There rarely exist local remedies
against the acts of the authorized organs of the state.57
De Visscher cited58 this passage in support of his argument that it must
be possible to act directly on the international level to challenge the
application of a measure, legislative or executive, against which the law
of the relevant state offers no legal recourse. Otherwise, he reasoned,
international law would be subordinated to internal juridical arrangements, an ‘unacceptable result, contrary to the autonomy of the international legal order’.59
One writer has also suggested that local remedies should be deemed
exhausted ‘if the cost involved in proceeding considerably outweighs the
possibility of any satisfaction resulting’.60 This proposition may be doubtful
with regard to exhaustion in the context of diplomatic protection, but it is
not to be assumed that the requirement is to be understood in precisely the
same way in specific instances of denial of justice.
57
Arbitration under Article 181 of the Treaty of Neuilly (Greece v. Bulgaria), 4 November 1931,
(1934) 28 AJIL 760, at p. 789. Undén was appointed by the Council of the League of
Nations. He issued the award in French, and it was published in the original in Uppsala
Universitets Årsskrift (yearbook), vol. 1932 (Prog. 1) and 1933 (Prog. 2). The passage
reproduced above refers to ‘les actes des organes les plus autorisés de l’Etat’, which means that
the translation should have used the expression ‘most authorised organs’.
58
De Visscher at p. 424, note 2. 59 Ibid. at p. 424.
60
David R. Mummery, ‘The Content of the Duty to Exhaust Local Remedies’, (1965) 59
AJIL 398, at p. 401. In one of his decisions as Umpire of the commission under the
US/Mexico Convention of 4 July 1876, Benjamin Burn (US v. Mexico), Moore,
Arbitrations, at p. 3140, Sir Edward Thornton explicitly acknowledged in dictum that
the issue of exhaustion might have a factual dimension as well as a purely legal one.
While dismissing the claim for failure of ‘a man of some education and determination’
living in the capital to bring an appeal, he observed:
‘In distant parts of the country, where the inferior judge is perhaps the only authority within reach,
and where the foreigner may be poor, uneducated, and isolated, such a proceeding [in the
supreme court] might be almost impossible.’
119
Denial of Justice in International Law
Application of the reasonableness qualification in Loewen
In Loewen, the Canadian claimant’s grievance arose out of a verdict
rendered against it by a Mississippi jury in the amount of US$500 million,
all but US$25 million of which was on account of ‘emotional distress’ and
‘punitive damages’.61 Loewen believed that there had been serious judicial misconduct and appealable errors. Yet its attempts to appeal, so
Loewen alleged, had been frustrated in circumstances described by the
arbitral tribunal as follows:
Loewen sought to appeal the $500 million verdict and judgment but was confronted with the application of an appellate bond requirement. Mississippi law
requires an appeal bond for 125% of the judgment as a condition of staying
execution on the judgment, but allows the bond to be reduced or dispensed with
for ‘good cause’.
Despite Claimants’ claim that there was good cause to reduce the appeal
bond, both the trial court and the Mississippi Supreme Court refused to reduce
the appeal bond at all and required Loewen to post a $625 million bond within
seven days in order to pursue its appeal without facing immediate execution of
the judgment. According to Claimants, that decision effectively foreclosed
Loewen’s appeal rights.
Claimants allege that Loewen was then forced to settle the case ‘under extreme
duress’. Other alternatives to settlement were said to be catastrophic and/or
unavailable. On January 29, 1996, with execution against their Mississippi assets
scheduled to start the next day, Loewen entered into a settlement with O’Keefe
under which they agreed to pay $175 million.62
As seen, the victim of a denial of justice is not required to pursue
ineffective appeals. Loewen could not complain on this account; the appeal
procedure existed, and there was no reason to doubt that it would have
been practically effective if the appeal had succeeded. As the arbitrators
wrote, the issue was rather the reasonable availability of the remedy. Quoting
with approval commentary to the effect that claimants should be permitted ‘to introduce evidence of the practical workings of justice’, such as
excessive orders of security for costs, the arbitrators put it thus:
Availability is not a standard to be determined or applied in the abstract. It
means reasonably available to the complainant in the light of its situation,
61
Mr Raymond Loewen was also a claimant as an individual shareholder; reference to
‘Loewen’ in the singular is made for convenience.
62
Loewen, 26 June 2003, at paras. 5–7.
120
Exhaustion of local remedies and denial of justice
including its financial and economic circumstances as a foreign investor, as they
are affected by any conditions relating to the exercise of any local remedy.
If a State attaches conditions to a right of appeal which render exercise of the
right impractical, the exercise of the right is neither available nor effective nor
adequate. Likewise, if a State burdens the exercise of the right directly or indirectly
so as to expose the complainant to severe financial consequences, it may well be
that the State has by its own actions disabled the complainant from affording the
State the opportunity of redressing the matter of complaint. The scope of the need
to exhaust local remedies must be considered in the light of these considerations.63
With these factors in mind, the arbitral tribunal analysed Loewen’s
situation as follows. Loewen did lodge an appeal to the Mississippi
Supreme Court. The appeal was expected to last 6–24 months. In the
meanwhile, if Loewen did not post the bond of US$625 million its assets
would be subject to enforcement, in Mississippi and elsewhere, up to the
judgment amount of US$500 million. Loewen was financially unable to
provide a bond in that amount. O’Keefe announced that it would pursue
aggressive enforcement initiatives. Loewen applied to the trial court for a
stay of enforcement against a bond of US$125 million, i.e. 125 per cent of
the compensatory damages component of the judgment. O’Keefe argued
against the application, referring to Loewen’s distressed share price and
the pendency of other lawsuits which might erode Loewen’s assets and
make it unable to pay the full US$500 million judgment amount if its
appeal failed. The motion was denied, as was a subsequent petition before
the Mississippi Supreme Court. Neither of these denials, in the arbitrators’ view, transgressed international minimum standards; each was ‘at
worst an erroneous or mistaken decision’.64 Coming on the back of such
egregious failures at the trial level, as described in the section on
‘Fundamental breaches of due process’ in Chapter 7, this tolerance can
hardly fail to raise many readers’ eyebrows.
Loewen was thus in the position that it could pursue the appeal, but
subject to the risk of execution. Its only alternatives were: (a) to make a
negotiated settlement with O’Keefe; (b) to file for bankruptcy; or (c) to try
to interest the US Supreme Court in its predicament on the grounds that
the bond requirement violated constitutional guarantees of due process,
given the likelihood of irreparable harm before appellate review.
In these circumstances, Loewen put an end to its travails by paying
O’Keefe US$175 million to settle the dispute. The tribunal was left to
63
Ibid. at paras. 169–170.
64
Ibid. at paras. 189 and 197.
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Denial of Justice in International Law
consider whether, given its alternatives, Loewen had pursued reasonable
local remedies.
To proceed with the appeal while exposed to the imminent danger of
enforcement would have exposed the company to ‘the inevitable consequence that Loewen’s share price would collapse’; it was not a ‘reasonably
available remedy’.
As for the option of reorganisation under the Bankruptcy Code, the
arbitrators were hesitant. They noted that although it would have resulted
in a stay of execution, and the company could continue to conduct its
business under court supervision, such a course of action would have
restricted its initiatives and perhaps depressed its share price. All in all,
they expressed the view that ‘no doubt there are some situations in which
it would be reasonable to expect an impecunious claimant to file [for
bankruptcy protection] in order to exercise an available right of appeal’,
and the reasonability of doing so depended to some extent on Loewen’s
reasons for entering into the settlement agreement (see below).
With respect to the envisaged petition to the US Supreme Court (as
well as an attempt to achieve collateral review before a Federal District
Court), each side submitted reports from law professors. The arbitral
tribunal found itself unable to do more than to say that there was ‘a
prospect, at most a reasonable prospect or possibility’, of success.65
Given the refusal to reduce the bond – ‘an act for which the
Respondent is responsible in international law’ – did Loewen have ‘a
reasonably available and adequate remedy’ in the US federal courts? The
arbitral tribunal rejected the argument that the settlement agreement in
itself should be deemed a voluntary abandonment of local remedies:
It may be that the business judgment was inevitable or the natural outcome of
adverse consequences generated by the impugned court decision . . . If, in all the
circumstances, entry into the settlement agreement was the only course which
Loewen could reasonably be expected to take, that would be enough to justify an
inference or conclusion that Loewen had no reasonably available and adequate
remedy.66
One might be puzzled at the idea that the responsibility of the USA
could depend on an act – the refusal to reduce the bond – which the arbitral
tribunal had said did not violate international minimum standards. Perhaps
it should be interpreted as meaning that a non-violative act for which the
state is responsible could nevertheless propel a violative act (the original
65
Ibid. at para. 211.
66
Ibid. at paras. 214–215.
122
Exhaustion of local remedies and denial of justice
judgment) over the threshold of the exhaustion requirement because it did
not allow the aggrieved party a reasonably practical opportunity to overturn
the judgment. For many of us, that will be over-rarefied, and we will draw
the conclusion that the refusal to reduce the bond was also deemed to be an
infringement of international law, no matter what the arbitrators had said
about it before they got to this point in the award.
The matter will remain academic, however, since the arbitrators,
rather abruptly, identified ‘the central difficulty in Loewen’s case’ as
being its failure to present evidence ‘disclosing its reasons for entering
into the settlement agreement in preference to pursuing other options’.
Stating that the ‘onus of proof rested with Loewen’, they concluded that
they could not decide that settlement was Loewen’s only reasonable
option, since ‘we are simply left to speculate on the reasons which led to
the decision to adopt that course rather than to pursue other options’. To
the contrary, one could but conclude, so they found, that Loewen failed to
pursue its remedies, and had therefore not demonstrated a violation of
international law; it would have failed even if it had retained Canadian
nationality to the end.
The award contains a postscript, all the more curious for appearing
under the caption ‘conclusions’ inserted after the dispositive orders.
Noting that they had ‘criticised the Mississippi proceedings in the
strongest terms’ and concluded that ‘there was unfairness here towards
the foreign investor’ which engendered a ‘natural instinct’ to correct ‘a
miscarriage of justice’, the arbitrators nevertheless concluded that they
were constrained by the limits of international law. No one can quarrel
with this conclusion. If that was indeed so, the apology was unnecessary,
and will therefore appear to many as disconcerting. Indeed, since the
thrust of the ‘conclusion’ is that international tribunals cannot interfere
in internal affairs unless it does so ‘in the last resort’, it relates only to the
dismissal of the case on the merits – as though this passage had been
written before the arbitral tribunal decided that the complaint would be
dismissed for failure of a formal jurisdictional requirement of citizenship. In the end, the arbitrators thus seemed to be apologising for not
giving effect to a dictum. Given this avowed sympathy for the victim,
and given the fact that an international remedy would apparently have
been available if the evidence had shown the settlement had been the
only reasonable alternative, one is left to wonder why the arbitrators did
not ask for such evidence as there might be – and then let the chips fall
where they may. An international tribunal faced with a claim for denial
of justice is not an appellate jurisdiction required to deal with an
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Denial of Justice in International Law
immutable factual record. As we shall see throughout Chapters 6 and 7,
the real difficulty of denial of justice is less legal principle than the
evaluation of facts.
The idea that there was no evidence of Loewen’s deliberations about its
options in the wake of this corporate catastrophe, or that it would have
refused to provide it to the tribunal, would strike any reader of the award
as absurd. Certainly Loewen offered explanations to the writer who
covered the case for The New Yorker.67
It therefore did not come as a total surprise when Raymond Loewen,
in his individual capacity, requested the arbitral tribunal to issue a
supplemental decision in September 2003. His request contained
some startling revelations – at least to outsiders to the case. It now
transpired that significant proof had indeed been presented to the
arbitral tribunal in relation to the prospects of an appeal to the US
Supreme Court. That evidence had taken the form of a declaration of an
independent member of Loewen’s Board of Directors, who happened to
be a former Minister of Justice and Prime Minister of Canada, to the
effect that Loewen had formed a Special Committee to consider the
corporate response to the Mississippi proceedings. That Special
Committee had procured legal advice, and concluded that further
recourse was practically doomed to fail.
The legal advice in question had been given by a highly qualified
US consultant who concluded that: (i) the likelihood of obtaining
Supreme Court review was ‘exceedingly remote’; and (ii) a collateral
attack in a US federal court of first instance was so clearly ‘foreclosed’
by the one of the most famous decisions in US judicial history, Pennzoil v.
Texaco, that even the attempt might be sanctionable as abusive. Naturally
such opinion evidence is subject to contrary opinion, or to the tribunal’s
own assessment of its credibility. What is aberrant is to ignore it, indeed to
declare that there had been no attempt to adduce evidence of this kind.
Loewen Inc. itself might have had a basis on which to complain
about the award, but ran the risk that any request for reconsideration
or annulment would fall on deaf ears due to the great reluctance to
disturb international res judicata. But the same conclusion did not
67
‘Even if, by some miracle, he did manage to post the $625 million bond, and avoid
immediate bankruptcy, that in itself would have serious repercussions for the company.
The premium payments and interest would amount to tens of millions of dollars, and it
would affect the warranties and covenants made to banks that had financed the
acquisition of several hundred funeral homes.’ Jonathan Harr, ‘The Burial’, The New
Yorker, 1 November 1999, at p. 93.
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Exhaustion of local remedies and denial of justice
necessarily apply to Raymond Loewen himself, who as a shareholder of
Loewen Inc. (approximately 15 per cent) had an independent right to
assert compensable damages under Article 1116 of NAFTA. This
claim was not pronounced upon by the arbitral tribunal, in what
Mr Loewen considered a case of infra petita. In his motion for reconsideration of this undecided claim, referring to the three major themes of
the putative final award, he pointed out first: that the substantive denial
of justice, albeit in dicta, was made surabundantly clear in the tribunal’s
emphatic findings of an ‘outrage’ imputable to the US Government;
secondly that the nationality requirement which was fatal to Loewen
Inc. did not affect him because he had always remained Canadian;
and thirdly that he was in a position to point with insistence to evidence
which the arbitrators said was not there. The arbitral tribunal could
hardly have upheld this motion without admitting to considerable
embarrassment. Instead, in what is destined to remain a controversial
ending to this case, the arbitrators issued a six-page decision68 asserting
that its dismissal of all claims ‘in their entirety’ should be understood as
‘necessarily’ resolving Mr Loewen’s Article 1116 claim; they referred
in particular to their prior disinclination to accept the Loewen thesis
that the settlement which put an end to the US court actions was
consistent with the duty to exhaust local remedies.
In Amco II, Indonesia argued that the acts of its administrative agency
in revoking an investment licence ‘could not themselves constitute a
wrong in international law, if unlawful, but that only a failure of the
courts to rectify them could constitute such a wrong’.69 The award
noted this argument, but dealt with it by giving two non-answers: (i)
denial of justice may be committed by an administrative body, not just a
court; and (ii) the behaviour of the investment board transgressed the
criteria of denial of justice as established in international precedents.
This stance cannot be squared with Loewen, nor is it consonant with the
analysis developed in this study. National responsibility for denial of
justice occurs only when the system as a whole has been tested and the
initial delict has remained uncorrected. It may be that the Amco II
tribunal took account of the fact that the investment board sought and
received Presidential approval for its decision and concluded that any
appeal would have been futile. But then the arbitrators should have said
68
Decision on Request for a Supplementary Decision, 13 September 2004, 10 ICSID
Reports [forthcoming].
69
Amco II at para. 137.
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Denial of Justice in International Law
so, and justified their position in the light of the international standard,
which, as discussed above, requires that claimants avail themselves of ‘a
reasonable possibility of an effective remedy’.
No fresh starts at the international level
Aliens should not be able to pursue a state for denial of justice because it
failed to deal fairly with contentions made for the first time after an
international forum has been seized. All arguments to be raised at the
international level must also have been invoked in the municipal proceedings. The arbitral tribunal put it thus in the Finnish Ships case:
all the contentions of fact and the propositions of law which are brought forward
by the claimant Government . . . must have been investigated and adjudicated
upon by the municipal Courts.70
More recently, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal
Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has held that ‘a party should not be
permitted to refrain from making an objection to a matter which was
apparent during the course of the trial and to raise it only in the event of
an adverse finding against that party’.71
In Professor Daniel O’Connell’s apt phrase, international law has thus
adopted ‘the rule common to municipal systems that a litigant cannot
have a second try if, because of ill-preparation, he fails in his action’.72
O’Connell noted that it follows from this proposition that the exhaustion
rule requires not only the pursuit of appeals, but also, while the earlier
proceedings were in progress, that the complainant availed himself of
existing procedural mechanisms (such as calling witnesses and discovering
documents) essential to the prosecution of his case.
70
Finland v. Great Britain, 9 May 1934, III RIAA 1479, at p. 1502. See also Jiménez de
Aréchaga, ‘Past Third of a Century’ 282: ‘[A] State cannot base the charges made
before an international tribunal or organ on objections or grounds which were not
previously raised before the municipal courts.’
71
Prosecutor v. Delalic and others, 20 February 2001, Case No. IT–96–21–A at para. 640.
The complainant in Delalic was able to demonstrate that one of the judges had slept
through portions of the trial, but his counsel had not raised the point before the lower
court. In Gregory v. United Kingdom, 25 February 1997, (1998) 25 EHRR 577, the
European Court of Human Rights attached importance, at para. 45, to the fact that
defence counsel had remained passive when a juror in a criminal case complained to
the judge that there was racial bias within the jury.
72
D. P. O’Connell, International Law (2nd edn, London: Stevens & Sons, 1970), at
p. 1059.
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Exhaustion of local remedies and denial of justice
As the Ambatielos case showed, this concept may impose a daunting task
on a foreigner’s advocate when faced with tactical choices in a trial. The
commission in that case, starting with the proposition that it is ‘the whole
system of legal protection, as provided by municipal law, which must have
been put to the test’,73 made clear that the failure to have called a witness –
whom Greece itself argued would have provided decisive evidence in
favour of a different outcome – may be fatal.
Effect of forks in the road
Many investment treaties make it clear that a foreign claimant must elect
his remedy, and that such an election is irreversible.
This requirement does not prevent the complainant from pursuing
separate causes of action before different fora. Indeed, there are circumstances where he obviously must do so because his preferred forum does
not have subject matter jurisdiction over all causes of action. Broadly
speaking, the conceivable causes of action may include:
(a) violations of law74 which do not contravene treaty rights;
(b) breaches of a contract which do not contravene treaty rights, or are
subject to an exclusive75 contractual choice of forum;
(c) violations of treaty rights.
The fact that a claimant goes to a national court with respect to (a), or that
he seizes the contractually designated forum with respect to (b), does not
constitute an election not to bring (c) before the relevant international forum.
Before considering how a claim of denial of justice falls to be processed
in the context of such forks in the road, to use the now common expression, it
is useful to consider how they have been held to operate generally. The
guiding principle, that of ‘the essential basis of claim’, was established in
the Vivendi case. This ICSID arbitration resulted in a first award76 which
was partly annulled by an ad hoc committee operating pursuant to
73
Greece v. UK, 6 March 1956, XII RIAA 83, at p. 120.
This will typically mean violation of national law; violations of international law would
generally contravene treaty rights.
75
Exclusivity may for all practical purposes be forced upon an initially non-exclusive
contractual forum clause by operation of the relevant treaty, if it provides that non-use
of that clause is a precondition for one of the arbitral mechanisms made available by
the treaty. See Lucy Reed, Jan Paulsson and Nigel Blackaby, Guide to ICSID Arbitration
(The Hague: Kluwer, 2004), at pp. 58–59.
76
Compañı́a de Aguas del Aconquija S.A. and Vivendi Universal (formerly Compagnie Générale des
Eaux) v. Argentina, award, 21 November 2000; 5 ICSID Reports 296; (2001) 40 ILM 426.
74
127
Denial of Justice in International Law
Article 52 of the ICSID Convention.77 The case arose from a dispute
under a concession contract entered into by a French company and its
Argentine affiliate, on the one hand, and Tucumán, a province of
Argentina, on the other, for the operation of a regional water and sewerage system. Although the concession contract provided that the parties
would submit disputes to the local administrative courts, the claimants did
not bring any disputes before the local courts. They instead filed claims
against Argentina under the France–Argentina bilateral investment
treaty (BIT), seeking damages for actions that related not just to breach
of the BIT but also to breach of the concession contract.
The first arbitral tribunal found that it had jurisdiction, but proceeded to
dismiss all of the treaty breach claims on grounds that they were inextricably linked with questions of interpretation of the concession contract,
which, so the arbitrators held, were reserved for the local courts under
the dispute resolution clause of that contract. The committee empanelled
for the annulment proceeding set aside this part of the award, finding that
the tribunal had exceeded its authority by refusing to rule on the merits of
the treaty claims over which it had jurisdiction, even if there was an overlap
between the contract and treaty claims. The committee emphasised the
legal distinction between the two categories of claim:
As to the relation between breach of contract and breach of treaty in the present
case, it must be stressed that Articles 3 [fair and equitable treatment] and 5
[expropriation] of the BIT do not relate directly to breach of a municipal
contract. Rather they set an independent standard. A state may breach a treaty
without breaching a contract, and vice versa, and this is certainly true of these
provisions of the BIT. The point is made clear in Article 3 of the ILC Articles,
which is entitled ‘Characterization of an act of a State as internationally
wrongful’:
The characterization of an act of a State as internationally wrongful is governed
by international law. Such characterization is not affected by the characterization of the same act as lawful by internal law.
In accordance with this general principle (which is undoubtedly declaratory of
general international law), whether there has been a breach of the BIT and
whether there has been a breach of contract are different questions. Each of these
claims will be determined by reference to its own proper or applicable law – in
77
Compañı́a de Aguas del Aconquija S.A. and Vivendi Universal (formerly Compagnie Générale des
Eaux) v. Argentina, decision on annulment, 3 July 2002, 6 ICSID Reports 340; (2002) 41
ILM 1135 (Crawford, Fernàndez-Rozas, Fortier (presiding)).
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Exhaustion of local remedies and denial of justice
the case of the BIT, by international law; in the case of the Concession Contract,
by the proper law of the contract, in other words, the law of Tucumán.78
The Committee proceeded to develop an ‘essential’ or ‘fundamental basis
of the claim’ test:
In a case where the essential basis of a claim brought before an international
tribunal is a breach of contract, the tribunal will give effect to any valid choice of
forum clause in the contract . . .
On the other hand, where ‘the fundamental basis of the claim’ is a treaty
laying down an independent standard by which the conduct of the parties is to be
judged, the existence of an exclusive jurisdiction clause in a contract between the
claimant and the respondent state or one of its subdivisions cannot operate as a
bar to the application of the treaty standard. At most, it might be relevant – as
municipal law will often be relevant – in assessing whether there has been a
breach of the treaty.79
In the subsequent SGS v. Pakistan case, another ICSID tribunal applied
Vivendi’s ‘essential basis’ test to dismiss certain claims for lack of jurisdiction. The tribunal found that an arbitration clause in the parties’ preinspection services contract, which called for arbitration in Pakistan, to be
‘a valid forum selection clause so far as concerns the Claimant’s contract claims
which do not also amount to BIT claims’.80
Claims properly initiated before a national court or an arbitral tribunal
established by contract fall to be decided by that court or tribunal.
Whatever international jurisdiction that may be available under a treaty
would not, absent unusual circumstances, be in a position to hear such
claims. They include claims of denial of justice provided that their ‘essential basis’ has
been set forth as part of the cause of action.
But that will not be so in the more likely case that the alleged denial of
justice takes place in the course of the action before such a court or
contractually stipulated arbitral tribunal. The claimant was by definition
ignorant of a wrong which had not occurred at the time the complaint was
formulated.
78
80
Ibid. at paras. 95–96. 79 Ibid. at paras. 98 and 101 (footnotes omitted).
SGS Société Générale de Surveillance S.A. v. Pakistan, decision on jurisdiction, 6 August 2003,
8 ICSID Reports 406 at para. 161 (emphasis in the original). In SGS Société Générale de
Surveillance S.A. v. Philippines, decision on jurisdiction, 29 January 2004, 8 ICSID Reports
518, yet another tribunal, while making it clear that it did not believe that contractual
claims are in principle excluded as a grievance under investment treaties, and thus
explicitly disagreed with the analysis of the arbitrators who decided the SGS v. Pakistan
case, in practical terms reached a similar result.
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Denial of Justice in International Law
Summary
Since denial of justice implies the failure of a national legal system as a
whole to satisfy minimum standards, the wrong does not occur until
reasonable attempts have been made to secure the remedies available
within that system. Waivers of the requirement of exhaustion of local
remedies are effective with respect to other claims over which international adjudicators have jurisdiction, but only insofar as they are dispensable preconditions for seizing the international forum. With respect to
denial of justice, they are indispensable; the claim simply cannot be said to
exist until the self-correcting features of the national system have failed.
On the other hand, claimants do not have to seek to avail themselves of
remedies which offer no reasonable prospect of success. And it is important to bear in mind the frequently quoted statement of Sir Hersch
Lauterpacht to the effect that the rule of exhaustion of local remedies is
‘not purely technical’ but one which ‘international tribunals have applied
with a considerable degree of elasticity’.81
The issue of exhaustion of local remedies relates to the admissibility of
claims and must be distinguished from issues of jurisdiction. An international tribunal either has jurisdiction or not. Any consideration to the
effect that it might have been reasonable for the parties to establish international jurisdiction is entitled to no weight if they have not done so.
A tribunal’s ruling on a jurisdictional demurrer is almost invariably open
to review. The rule of exhaustion of remedies, on the other hand, gives the
international tribunal plenary authority to determine the ripeness of the
claim in light of its evaluation of the circumstances facing the claimant.
Since the requirement of exhaustion is a substantive element of the delict
rather than a prerequisite of the authority of the tribunal, a finding by an
arbitral tribunal that there was an adequate exhaustion of remedies
should be no more subject to review than any other factual determination.
Treaties which require an election of remedies, with the result that a
claimant chooses an irreversible direction at a fork in the road, do not
preclude claims of denial of justice before an international tribunal with
respect to acts or omissions which were not encompassed in the petition
made to an initially elected national forum. The most obvious instance
would be an allegation of denial of justice in that very forum.
81
Certain Norwegian Loans, 1957 ICJ Reports, 9, at p. 39.
130
6
Denial of justice by outside interference
This chapter – and the next – describes a field which is anything but
limited to a handful of precedents. Given the prodigious expansion of
international commercial arbitration over the past half-century (the
increase of trade being its fundamental cause, and the 1958 New York
Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral
Awards its primary instrument) modern practitioners may be excused for
believing that we are living in an unprecedented golden age of international arbitration. They would be surprised to learn how vast international arbitral jurisprudence was in the nineteenth century. In the period
between 1814 and 1898, for example, one study enumerated no less than
158 different international tribunals, including the celebrated commissions created in 1853 between Britain and the US; in 1868 between
Mexico and the US; and in 1880 between France and the US.1 All of
these bodies were created by treaty, some to resolve only one dispute, but
others to deal with many cases over a period of years.
Denial of justice was a dominant theme in early international arbitrations. We have already examined the reason in Chapter 4. Denial of
justice was the primordial private grievance to give rise to diplomatic
protection. Indeed, claims whose true basis were quite different – such as
expropriation or breach of contract – were frequently cast as denials of
1
W. Evans Darby, International Tribunals: A Collection of Various Schemes Which Have Been
Propounded, and of Instances since 1815 (London: Peace Society, 1899), at pp. 285–304
(Darby titled this little annex: ‘The Proved Practicability of International Arbitration’).
The list did not include the commissions created under the famous Jay Treaty, UK/US,
8 Stat. 116, which was concluded in 1794 for the purpose, inter alia, of adjudicating
claims of British creditors who were unsatisfied by their treatment at the hands of US
courts, and vice versa.
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Denial of Justice in International Law
justice on the conceptual basis that the initial wrong had not been
repaired by the local judicial system. There is therefore a multitude of
instances in which nineteenth and early twentieth-century international
adjudicators applied the doctrine concretely.
By the time Freeman concluded the research for his monograph in
1938, many more international adjudicators had rendered international
awards, including (to name only the most prominent ones) those of the
British–US commission created in 1910; the several arbitral tribunals
established by Germany and Austria-Hungary, on the one hand, and
various allied powers, on the other; the Mixed Claims Commission
created by treaty in 1921 between Germany and the US; the several
commissions set up under seven treaties concluded by Mexico with the
US, France, Germany and Britain between 1923 and 1928; and the US –
Panama Commissions created by treaties in 1928 and 1932. Freeman’s
‘Table of Cases’ (almost exclusively decisions of international tribunals or
commissions) listed no less than 457 entries. Even so, his work was but a
survey which, despite its immense value as such, gives only an imperfect
picture of the wealth of underlying materials that comprises this
jurisprudence.
Any scholar with access to these materials will quickly find that an
in-depth examination of a single individual case – including not only the
ultimate decision but often also three or even more lengthy individual
opinions, memorials by the litigating states, and the record of the underlying procedures alleged to have comprised the denial of justice – is often
at least a full day’s work. For a proper comprehension of these precedents,
it is not sufficient to understand critical distinguishing facts. One must also
examine how the claim and defences were pleaded, and, perhaps most
crucially, be aware of specific limitations often included in the treaties that
created the international bodies, both with respect to the types of liability
that would in principle be justiciable and with respect to the kind of relief
that could be awarded.
Claimants who say they are victims of denial of justice often have long
stories to tell. It is in the nature of the thing; frustration born of repeatedly
thwarted efforts is what creates the sense of injustice. Thus the patterns of
behaviour said to comprise denial of justice are often kaleidoscopic. A
legislated denial of justice is likely to be coupled with executive interference (or even be a manifestation thereof); breaches of due process may be
just as logically categorised as instances of arbitrariness or gross incompetence. The categories of Chapters 6 and 7 overlap to such a degree that
they may seem artificial. Still, the approach of this monograph must be
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Denial of justice by outside interference
thematic. (The alternative would be a massive case digest.) Hence the
reader will notice different aspects of the same case appearing in different
sections, and on occasion may feel required to cross-refer with the
assistance of the index to get a fuller picture.
It might appear logical to distinguish grievances relating to civil jurisdictions from complaints relating to the administration of penal law. It is
true that some elements are unique to each category. There is also,
however, substantial overlap between the two with respect to important
elements of what international adjudicators have found to be at the core
of due process. The least repetitive approach is therefore to proceed by
themes, with indications where appropriate of those aspects which are
peculiar to either civil or penal proceedings.
Jurisprudence under human rights treaties
Our study is aided by the emergence of a new and formidable body of
jurisprudence under human rights treaties. Foremost among these international instruments is the European Convention on Human Rights,
Article 6(1) of which provides that:
In the determination of his civil rights and obligations or of any criminal charge
against him, everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable
time by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law.
This fundamental provision has been and will in all certitude continue to be
relied upon by numerous litigants before both international and national
jurisdictions. The elements of Article 6(1) merit individual consideration:
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
(iv)
(v)
(vi)
(vii)
it applies to the whole legal process: the determination of civil as
well as criminal cases;
a fair hearing means adequate notice and an adequate opportunity
to examine and rebut evidence;
a public hearing excludes secret special tribunals;
justice delayed may be justice denied;
the independence of tribunals is vitiated if they are controlled or
intimidated by the executive branch of government;
the impartiality of tribunals is vitiated if they are controlled or
intimidated by powerful individuals or groups;
the notion of tribunals established by law excludes extraconstitutional ad hoc jurisdictions or ‘popular tribunals’ set up by the
executive branch or a mob.
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Denial of Justice in International Law
These elements recur in other international texts, such as Article 14(1) of
the (United Nations) International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
and Article 8 of the American Convention on Human Rights. They are
recurrent features in the various instances of denial of justice considered
in this chapter and in Chapter 7.
Denial of access to justice
The right of access to courts is fundamental and uncontroversial; its
refusal the most obvious form of denial of justice. Legal rights would be
illusory if there were no entitlement to a procedural mechanism to give
them effect. The notion of free access to courts was given the following
elucidation in the Ambatielos arbitration:
the foreigner shall enjoy full freedom to appear before the courts for the protection or defence of his rights, whether as plaintiff or defendant; to bring any action
provided or authorised by law; to deliver any pleading by way of defence, set off
or counterclaim; to engage Counsel; to adduce evidence, whether documentary
or oral or of any other kind; to apply for bail; to lodge appeals and, in short, to use
the Courts fully and to avail himself of any procedural remedies or guarantees
provided by the law of the land in order that justice may be administered on a
footing of equality with nationals of the country.2
Although Article 6(1) of the European Convention of Human Rights did
not in terms create a right of access in 1975, the European Court of
Human Rights held, in Golder v. UK, that such a right was inherent: ‘It
would be inconceivable . . . that [Art. 6(1)] should describe in detail the
procedural guarantees afforded to parties in a pending lawsuit and should
not first protect that which alone makes it in fact possible to benefit from
such guarantees, that is, access to a court.’3
This holding was controversial. Counsel for the UK (Sir Francis Vallat)
argued in his oral submissions that ‘the Government of the United
Kingdom had no idea when it was accepting Article 6 . . . of the
Convention that it was accepting an obligation to accord a right of access
to the courts without qualification’.4 This was an overstatement; the
jurisprudence of the European Court since then, as we shall see, has
been characterised precisely by the challenge of defining appropriate
2
Greece v. United Kingdom award, 6 March 1956, 23 ILR 306, at p. 325.
Golder v. United Kingdom, 21 February 1975, (1975) 1 EHRR 524, at para. 35.
4
Ibid., quoted in the separate opinion of Judge Sir Gerald Fitzmaurice, at para. 39,
note 24.
3
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Denial of justice by outside interference
qualifications. Still, given the importance of his contribution to
our subject forty-three years earlier,5 it is interesting to read Sir Gerald
Fitzmaurice’s lengthy dissenting opinion. He disagreed that prison authorities had prevented access to courts when they forbade a prisoner from
consulting a solicitor with a possible view to instituting civil action against
a guard who had accused him of participating in a disturbance.6 But, he
wrote, even if his view of the facts was wrong, as a matter of principle:
The conclusion I draw from the nature of the successive texts [of the draft
Convention] . . . is that the contracting States were content to rely de facto on
the situation whereby, in practice, in all European countries a very wide measure
of access to the courts was afforded; but without any definite intention on their part
to convert this into, or commit themselves to the extent of, a binding international
obligation on the matter . . . This type of obligation cannot, for reasons already
stated, be internationally acceptable unless it is defined and particularized, and its
incidence and modalities specified. The Convention does not do this; and the
Court, with good reason, does not compound the misconceptions of the Judgment
by attempting a task that lies primarily within the competence of governments. As
the Judgment itself in terms recognizes [in para. 39(2)]: ‘It is not the function of the
Court to elaborate a general theory of the limitations admissible in the case of
convicted prisoners, nor even to rule in abstracto on the compatibility of . . . the
[United Kingdom] Prison Rules . . . with the Convention’. But if it is not the
function of the Court to elaborate restrictions on the right, then a fortiori can it not
be its function to postulate the right itself which is one that cannot operate in
practice without the very restrictions the Court declines to elaborate.7
In antiquity the protection of the law could lawfully be openly withheld
from foreigners. In modern international life, even the least sympathetic
government understands the benefit of being seen as attached to the rule
of law, and therefore tends to give the foreigner his day in court. What
better illustration than the Stalinist show trials of the value ascribed, in
terms of propaganda, to a semblance of respect for the forms of a legal
process? (See the section on ‘Pretence of form’ in Chapter 7.)
5
Fitzmaurice.
The Prison Rules 1964, a statutory instrument, permit a prisoner in an English prison to
consult a legal adviser in connection with matters that do not concern an ongoing
litigation to which the prisoner is a party only with the leave of the Home Secretary.
Golder applied for such leave in order to consult a solicitor about the possibility of
bringing a libel claim against a prison guard who had made a statement, following a
prison riot, implicating Golder as a participant in the disturbance. The Home Secretary
denied Golder’s application, and Golder submitted a complaint to the European
Commission of Human Rights.
7
Golder v. United Kingdom, 21 February 1975, (1975) 1 EHRR 524, separate opinion of
Fitzmaurice, at para. 46.
6
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Denial of Justice in International Law
Today, a claim is therefore unlikely to be based on the absolute refusal of
access to justice, but rather the refusal of access under reasonable conditions.
Article 6(3)(b) of the European Convention provides specifically with
respect to criminal trials that the accused must be afforded ‘adequate time
and facilities for the preparation of his defence’. The European Court held
that Greece breached this principle in a case where an air force captain was
convicted of disclosing military secrets.8 He was first sentenced by the
Permanent Air Force Court to two-and-a-half years’ imprisonment. He
petitioned the Courts-Martial Appeal Court, which appointed two experts
to consider the significance of the technical data on guided missiles which
the defendant had communicated to a private enterprise. The defendant
was also allowed to appoint experts. Four days of hearings were conducted;
nineteen witnesses were heard. The appellate judgment maintained the
conviction, but reduced the sentence to a suspended term of five months on
the grounds that the disclosed secrets had been trivial.
The problem for the European Court related to the handling of the
final appeal to the Court of Cassation (Areios Pagos). Under the Military
Criminal Code, such an appeal had to be lodged within a period of only
five days. Although the appellate judgment was read out in the defendant’s presence, it did not contain the Appeal Court’s answers to six
detailed questions deemed to be decisive on the issue of guilt.
Accordingly the defendant was in a position to only file a one-page
petition to the Areios Pagos, perforce expressed in general terms. The six
answers of the Appeal Court were communicated to him forty-eight days
after the judgment. At that point in time, his ability to expand the petition
was severely circumscribed.9
In these circumstances, the European Court, while noting the ‘considerable freedom’ enjoyed by states in ‘the choice of appropriate means’
to satisfy Article 6 of the Convention, affirmed that national courts must
nevertheless:
indicate with sufficient clarity the grounds on which they based their decision. It
is this, inter alia, which makes it possible for the accused to exercise usefully the
rights of appeal available to him.10
8
Hadjianastassiou v. Greece, 16 December 1992, (1993) 16 EHRR 219.
‘[A]dditional submissions may be taken into account only if the initial appeal sets out at
least one ground which is found to be admissible and sufficiently substantiated.’ Ibid. at
para. 36.
10
Ibid. at para. 33.
9
136
Denial of justice by outside interference
In the premises:
the rights of the defence were subject to such restrictions that the applicant did
not have the benefit of a fair trial.11
Government officials have found a number of indirect ways to frustrate
access to justice. Their effect is a denial of justice. In his important study in
1935, Judge de Visscher reasoned that that access to court was denied
de facto whenever a legal system imposed ‘abusive formalities or conditions,
such as the requirement of a manifestly exaggerated bond’.12 In the
Ballistini case, local officials ignored requests to deliver copies of documents
which were formally necessary for him to bring an action.13 Venezuela
once promulgated a decree (in 1873) to the effect that any plaintiff ‘exaggerating’ the amount of his injury may be fined or imprisoned.14 In modern
times, government officials faced with vast foreign debts have taken measures destroying the profitability of investments and then threatened further
sanctions if the investors sought international remedies. Granting an
amnesty to parties who have committed torts or contractual breaches
may obviously have the effect of operating as an obstacle to judicial relief.
Freeman describes such examples, and the consensus in the course of the
Conference on the Codification of International Law in 1930 that such
amnesties may constitute denial of justice.15
The case of Philis v. Greece16 before the European Court of Human
Rights involved a less obvious hindrance. It concerned a national decree
under which engineers could not directly institute court actions to claim
for fees, but had to request that the Technical Chamber of Greece do so
on their behalf. The government stated that the purpose was to protect
engineers from pressure to accept excessive reductions of fees from
powerful employers, and thus to secure the rights of engineers to a
‘compulsory minimum scale of fees’. The system also allowed the
Chamber to secure payment of a compulsory insurance contribution.
Philis did not approve of the way his claims were presented by the
Chamber, which used counsel of its, not his, choice. He sought to initiate
11
Ibid. at para. 37. 12 De Visscher at p. 395.
J. H. Ralston, Venezuelan Arbitrations of 1903 (Washington, DC: US Government
Printing Office, 1904), at p. 503. A similar incident was part of the epic Fabiani case,
Moore, Arbitrations at p. 4878, at 4903.
14
Freeman at p. 232. An extreme form of obstacle was illustrated by the Caccavilli case,
where the President of Santo Domingo (General Heureaux) had orchestrated a
condemnation of Caccavilli in order to dispossess him. Caccavilli appealed, and was
assassinated on the way to the hearing. Freeman at p. 231, note 4.
15
Ibid. at p. 232. 16 27 August 1991, (1991) 13 EHRR 741.
13
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Denial of Justice in International Law
an action directly. The Athens Court of Appeal ruled that he lacked
requisite capacity. He then came to the European Court, alleging that
he had been deprived of his right of access to a court. His complaint was
upheld. The Court recognised that the right of access to courts is not
absolute, but affirmed – in one of many iterations of this expression – that
limitations on such access must not be so great ‘that the very essence of the
right is impaired’. By that test, there had been a violation since Philis ‘was
not able to institute proceedings, directly and independently’.17
Judge Pettiti, the lone dissenter of the nine judges, reasoned that if the
Chamber refused to bring proceedings, or did so incompetently, the plaintiff
could sue the Chamber for its inaction or negligence; therefore there was not
a definitive impairment of the right of action. This conclusion is unappealing. Philis was interested in suing his debtor, not in initiating a conflict with
his own professional association. And the notion of a right to complain
about negligent prosecution of his claim seems unrealistic. A litigant is not
content with a level of representation which escapes censure as negligent; he
seeks total commitment, not adequacy.
In sum, the UK’s pleadings in the Golder case were wrong in apprehending that the European Court would recognise ‘a right of access to the
courts without qualification’. Limitations are accepted when they are
motivated by a legitimate purpose, when the means are proportional to
that objective, and when ‘the very essence’ of the right is not impaired.
The perception of international adjudicators as to what constitutes essence
and impairment cannot be encapsulated in an a priori definition. The Philis
case suggests that the right of access to justice, beyond the right to a fair
trial before a lawful tribunal, also includes the liberty to decide whether,
when and how one pursues or protects one’s legal rights.
Absolute denial of access through state immunity
There is one area where states, by statute or judicial precedent, make no
pretence of debating the need to establish reasonable limitations on access
to courts. Rather, they make access flatly impossible.
Special governmental immunities from suit by definition exclude access to
the courts in the determination of civil rights. This raises the spectre of denial
of justice, just as it could defeat the objectives of human rights conventions.
The European Court of Human Rights has confronted this problem in a
number of cases. In Fogarty v. United Kingdom, the Court observed that:
17
Ibid. at paras. 59 and 65.
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Denial of justice by outside interference
it would not be consistent with the rule of law in a democratic society or with the
basic principle underlying Article 6(1) [of the European Convention on Human
Rights] – namely that civil claims must be capable of being submitted to a judge
for adjudication – if, for example, a State could, without restraint or control by
the Convention enforcement bodies, remove from the jurisdiction of the courts a
whole range of civil claims or confer immunities from civil liability on large
groups or categories of persons.18
Fogarty involved a claim by a former employee of the United States
Embassy in London who considered she had been the victim of victimisation and discrimination under the UK Sex Discrimination Act 1975. The
US invoked its immunity from civil proceedings under the UK State
Immunity Act 1978. The plaintiff was advised that this assertion of
immunity was irresistible; there was no means by which a court or
tribunal in the UK could entertain her grievance. She therefore brought
action against the UK before the European Court.
The European Convention does not require that the ‘civil rights and
obligations’ which must be determined by a fair trial have a particular
substantive content beyond those explicitly set forth in the treaty itself.
The contrary would, to say the least, have made its signature a political
unlikelihood. The European Court has established a procedural/substantive
distinction as a tool to understanding that its role is to protect the procedural
entitlement to obtain a fair hearing of such substantive rights and obligations
which may be alleged to exist under local law. As the Court said in Fogarty:
‘Certainly the Convention enforcement bodies may not create by way of
interpretation of Article 6(1) a substantive civil right which has no legal
basis in the State concerned.’19 The UK sought to argue that the applicant
did not have a substantive right under domestic law due to the operation
of State immunity. The Court rejected this argument; the rights claimed
were explicitly recognised under the Sex Discrimination Act, and the Court
was therefore ‘satisfied that the grant of immunity is to be seen not as
qualifying a substantive right but as a procedural bar’.20
18
Fogarty v. United Kingdom, 21 November 2001, (2002) 34 EHRR 12, at para. 25, citing
Fayed v. United Kingdom, 21 September 1994, (1994) 18 EHRR 393, at para. 65.
19
Fogarty v. United Kingdom, 21 November 2001, (2002) 34 EHRR 12, at para. 25.
20
Ibid. at para. 26. One must therefore question the arbitral tribunal’s dictum in the case
of Mondev (discussed below in this section) to the effect that the Boston Redevelopment
Authority’s entitlement to statutory immunity under the law of Massachusetts
‘arguably’ was a matter of ‘substance rather than procedure in terms of the distinction
under Article 6(1) of the European Convention’. Mondev at para. 144. The counter is
obviously that the tort of international interference in contractual relations is
established in Massachusetts law, and the issue is whether immunity was a procedural bar.
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Denial of Justice in International Law
Nevertheless, the Court held by sixteen votes to one that there had
been no violation of Article 6(1) of the European Convention. It noted
that the right of access to court is not absolute, but may be limited in a
manner left to ‘a certain margin of appreciation’ as long as:
*
*
*
the ‘very essence’ of the right is not impaired;
the limitation pursues ‘a legitimate aim’;21
there is a ‘reasonable relationship of proportionality between the
means employed and the aim sought to be achieved’.
The Court had no difficulty in accepting that the grant of sovereign
immunity pursues a legitimate aim: ‘complying with international law
to promote comity and good relations between States’.
As for proportionality, measures which ‘reflect generally recognised
rules of public international law on State immunity cannot be regarded as
imposing a disproportionate restriction on the right of access to court’.
Fogarty should be compared with another judgment rendered the same
day. In McElhinney v. Ireland, the applicant seized the Irish courts to seek
damages against the UK Secretary of Defence for personal injury caused
by the alleged tort of a British soldier. The Irish Supreme Court held that
the case could not proceed by reason of the defendant’s sovereign immunity; the acts complained of related to an incident at a military checkpoint
and therefore must be regarded as jus imperii. McElhinney then seized the
European Court of Human Rights, claiming that his right to a trial had
been impaired. Ireland answered that the European Convention should
be interpreted in the light of public international law, which had long
been understood as requiring sovereign immunity with respect
to governmental acts of foreign states: ‘The limitation on the applicant’s
right of access to court had a legitimate objective, namely compliance
with generally recognised principles of international law and
the promotion of harmonious relations, mutual respect and understanding between nations.’22
The applicant countered that: (i) modern international law has evolved
to permit actions for personal injuries caused or occurring in the territory
of the forum state; (ii) the limitation could not be said to pursue a
‘legitimate aim’ in the absence of evidence that relations between the
21
In Ashingdane v. United Kingdom, 28 May 1985, (1985) 7 EHRR 528, at para. 57, the
Court had already held, at para. 58, that the avoidance of the ‘mischief . . . of [officials]
being unfairly harassed by litigation’ was a legitimate aim.
22
McElhinney v. Ireland, 21 November 2001, (2001) 34 EHRR 322, at para. 28.
140
Denial of justice by outside interference
UK and Ireland would have deteriorated significantly if the action had
been heard; and (iii) the limitation could not be deemed ‘proportionate’ as
the UK State Immunity Act 1978 did not grant immunity to foreign
governments for this type of action.
The European Court took this occasion to restate in a nutshell the
principles of its jurisprudence in this regard:
The right of access to court is not, however, absolute, but may be subject to
limitations; these are permitted by implication since the right of access by its very
nature calls for regulation by the State. In this respect, the Contracting States
enjoy a certain margin of appreciation, although the final decision as to the
observance of the Convention’s requirements rests with the Court. It must be
satisfied that the limitations applied do not restrict or reduce the access left to the
individual in such a way or to such an extent that the very essence of the right is
impaired. Furthermore, a limitation will not be compatible with Article [6(1)] if
it does not pursue a legitimate aim and if there is no reasonable relationship
of proportionality between the means employed and the aim sought to be
achieved.23
In the light of these principles, the Court said with respect to the case before it
that measures ‘which reflect generally recognised rules of public international
law on State immunity cannot be regarded as imposing a disproportionate
restriction’, and ‘it is not possible, given the present state of development of
international law, to conclude that Irish law conflicts with general principles’.
This judgment was rendered by a majority of twelve votes to five.
Among the dissenters, Judge Rozakis stated that ‘the balancing exercise
of weighing the various interests involved’ should have led to a different
outcome given the trend toward limiting sovereign immunity. He referred
to ‘a rather weak invocation of a State’s interest’. Three other dissenters
referred to Article 12 of the International Law Commission’s Draft
Articles on Jurisdictional Immunities of States and Their Property,
which would exclude sovereign immunity in the case of actions for
compensation for personal injury caused in the forum state, and noted
that this provision had not encountered ‘significant challenges’. Judge
Louraides added:
In present democratic society an absolute immunity from judicial proceedings
appears to be an anachronistic doctrine incompatible with the demands of justice
and the rule of law . . . It is correct that Article 6 may be subject to inherent
limitations, but these limitations should not affect the core of the right.
23
Ibid. at para. 34.
141
Denial of Justice in International Law
Procedural conditions such as time-limits, the need for leave to appeal etc. do not
affect the substance of the right. But completely preventing somebody from having
his case determined by a court, without any fault on his part and regardless of the
nature of the case, contravenes, in my opinion, Article [6(1)] of the Convention.
In Mondev, a case which arose under the investment protection chapter of the
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the claimant argued that
a Massachusetts state agency known as the Boston Redevelopment Authority
(BRA) had committed the tort of intentional interference with contractual
relations. (As described in the section on ‘No responsibility for misapplication
of national law’ in Chapter 4, the claimant had sought to exercise an option,
agreed with the City of Boston, to acquire rights to develop a site whose value
had greatly appreciated.) Although a jury had upheld this claim, its verdict
was set aside by the trial judge under the Massachusetts Tort Claims Act,
which gives immunity for intentional torts to public employers which are not
independent corporate entities. The judge’s decision was affirmed on appeal
by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts.
Mondev was a Canadian corporation and thus entitled to invoke
NAFTA. It argued before the international tribunal that conferring
such immunity was itself a failure to provide ‘full protection and security’
to its investment, in violation of Article 1105(1) of NAFTA. The United
States answered that customary international law does not require statutory authorities to be generally liable for their torts. Therefore it could not
be said that the immunity of the BRA infringed Article 1105(1).
This led to a detailed discussion of a number of novel considerations.
The US argued that governmental immunity from tort actions has a long
history as a matter of both federal and Massachusetts law. Although the
general immunity was abrogated at the federal level in 1946 and in
Massachusetts in 1978, various actions remained impossible – including
precisely suits alleging interference with contractual rights. The US
argued, moreover, that there are no legal systems where the liability of
officials are identical to those of private parties; the US approach should
not be viewed as exceptional in international terms.
Mondev countered that the conferral on a public entity of a ‘blanket
immunity’ from suit for tortious interference violated the express duty
under NAFTA to provide ‘full protection and security’.
Responding to these arguments, the tribunal defined its starting position
as follows:
circumstances can be envisaged where the conferral of a general immunity from
suit for conduct of a public authority affecting a NAFTA investment could
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Denial of justice by outside interference
amount to a breach of Article 1105(1) of NAFTA. Indeed the United States
implicitly accepted as much. It did not argue that public authorities could, for
example, be given immunity in contract vis-à-vis NAFTA investors and
investments.24
Moreover, the arbitrators stated that statutory immunity from tort actions
could also violate Article 1105(1), for example if an investor whose on-site
staff had been assaulted by the police ‘could well claim that its investment
was not accorded ‘‘treatment in accordance with international law including . . . full protection and security’’’.25
With respect to the specific tort of interference with contractual relations,
however, the arbitrators reasoned that there may be sound reasons why a
regulatory body should be protected against claims brought by private
parties disgruntled by the grant or refusal of permissions which have an
impact on commercial relations. Having to defend such actions might be
deemed unacceptably distractive. This ‘is a matter for the competent
organs of the State to decide’, and Mondev’s claim therefore failed.
In its original Notice of Arbitration,26 Mondev had cited a startling
sentence from the judgment of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial
Court, which made no attempt to de-emphasise the effect of immunity:
‘It is perfectly possible for a governmental entity to engage in dishonest
or unscrupulous behaviour as it pursues its legislatively mandated
ends.’27 The proscription of ‘unfair or deceptive practices in the conduct
of any trade or commerce’ was established by a Massachusetts statute.
Prior case law under that statute held that it did not apply in terms to
parties motivated by ‘legislative mandate, not business or personal
reasons’.28 This led immediately to the provocative statement quoted
above. Mondev pointed out that this was not a situation where the local
law did not contain the substantive rule on which it had sought to rely
(successfully so – with the jury). To the contrary, the wrong was clearly
defined, but a mischievous separate law purported to insulate the
wrongdoer. Referring to the offending sentence in the SJC’s judgment,
Mondev argued: ‘Such a rule clearly violates contemporary
24
Mondev at para. 151. 25 Ibid. at para. 152.
1 September 1999, available at <http://www.international-economic-law.org/
Mondev/mondev.pdf> at para. 113.
27
Lafayette Place Associates v. Boston Redevelopment Authority & another, 427 Mass. 509, at
p. 535; 694 NE 2d 820, at p. 836 (1998).
28
Poznik v. Massachusetts Medical Professional Insurance Association, 417 Mass. 48, at p. 52; 628
NE 2d 1 (1994).
26
143
Denial of Justice in International Law
international standards for foreign investor–host government commercial relations.’29
The US countered by quoting Freeman: ‘The organization
of . . . courts, the procedure to be followed, the kind of remedies instituted,
the laws themselves, are left to the State’s own discretion.’30 That surely did
not take the matter very far. The quotation is not actually from Freeman,
but, as he acknowledged, from the Memorial of the UK Government in
the Finnish Ships case. Freeman immediately continued, in his own words,
to make clear that ‘this delegation is not complete’ – and that is of course
the whole debate. But that feature was in the first instance ignored by the
US; its pleadings argued that: ‘Mondev has made no attempt to prove
that customary international law mandates that sovereigns adopt laws
subjecting themselves to liability for intentional tort.’31 This was an
ambitious way to put the issue; one might well have asked, instead,
whether customary international law allows sovereigns to adopt laws to
insulate themselves from liability.
In the better-refined arguments of its Rejoinder,32 the US noted that
the international system generally operates on the basis that ‘State municipal courts routinely dismiss proceedings in favour of a more convenient
foreign forum, finding such a forum to be adequate even where the cause
of action pleaded in the forum State does not exist in the foreign court or is
materially different there.’33 This observation misses the mark in that the
law of Massachusetts had explicitly recognised the cause of action raised
against the BRA. So the US defence ultimately depended on the proposition that deference must be given to different national solutions with
respect to the amenability to suit of public bodies. As the European
Court of Human Rights has said, it is ‘no part of the Court’s function to
substitute for the assessment of the national authorities’34 and access to
29
Notice of Arbitration, 1 September 1999, available at <http://www.internationaleconomic-law.org/Mondev/mondev.pdf> at para. 113.
30
Freeman at p. 79 (emphasis added by the US).
31
Counter-Memorial on Competence and Liability, 1 June 2001, available at <http://
www.state.gov/documents/organization/14710.pdf> at p. 52.
32
Rejoinder on Competence and Liability, 1 October 2001, available at <http://
www.state.gov/documents/organization/14711.pdf>.
33
Ibid. at p. 27, citing DiRienzo v. Chodos, 232 F.3d 49, 57 (2d Cir. 2000) (‘The mere fact
that the foreign and home fora have different laws does not ordinarily make the foreign
forum inadequate’); as well as La Société du Gaz de Paris v. Les Armateurs Français, House of
Lords, (1925) 23 L1 L Rep 209, at p. 210 (affirming decision of Scottish lower court
granting motion for dismissal on forum non conveniens grounds despite possible
unfavourable law in France).
34
Ashingdane v. United Kingdom, 28 May 1985, (1985) 7 EHRR 528, at para. 57.
144
Denial of justice by outside interference
courts may ‘vary in time and in place according to the needs and
resources of the community and of individuals’.35
There are nevertheless difficulties in trying to square the result in
Mondev with the conclusions of the important study authored by Judge
de Visscher in 1935. Mondev involved a conflict between local policies
concerning the efficiency of public administration (as enhanced by protection from distracting lawsuits) and the requirements of international
law. The latter, in de Visscher’s view, include the availability of at least
one court to examine the merits of a claim. The general rule must be,
he wrote, that a judgment declining jurisdiction is a denial of justice if
there is no other avenue for complaint.36 He cited an article by Professor
Charles Durand to the effect that: ‘One cannot be said to have had access
to the courts if only to be told that one is not entitled to formulate a
demand.’37
In a passage of obvious relevance to the particular circumstance of
Mondev – as indeed to any other case of claimed immunity under local
law – de Visscher wrote that the absence of any jurisdiction competent to
hear a complaint for damages caused by prejudicial administrative acts
would be internationally wrongful if this absence is due to ‘a measure of
discrimination against foreigners’.38 Moreover, whenever the state has
entered into a contractual relationship with an alien, it must ‘place at his
disposal internal legal means for ensuring its fulfilment’.39 This particular
point was at the heart of Judge Schwebel’s analysis, half a century later, of
‘denial of justice by governmental negation of arbitration’.40 The fulfilment of an arbitration agreement, one hardly needs to say, is to participate loyally in the arbitration.
The principle of immunity collided with that of the right of access to
justice in the case of UNESCO v. Boulois,41 where the international organisation had concluded a contract containing an arbitration clause but
later rejected the claimant’s attempt to initiate proceedings under the
35
Golder v. United Kingdom, 21 February 1975, (1975) 1 EHRR 524, at para. 38. To say
that access may be variable should not, however, be taken as meaning that it is infinitely
so. There must be limits to national discretion, lest the principle of international
accountability wither away.
36
De Visscher at p. 396.
37
‘La responsabilité internationale des Etats pour déni de justice’, 1931 Revue générale de
droit international public 696, at p. 713, quoted at de Visscher at p. 396, note 4.
38
Ibid. at p. 395. 39 Ibid. at p. 396, note 1.
40
Stephen M. Schwebel, International Arbitration: Three Salient Problems (Cambridge:
Grotius, 1987), at pp. 108 and following.
41
19 June 1998, 1999 Revue de l’arbitrage 343.
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Denial of Justice in International Law
clause on the grounds that there was no dispute as to performance. The
claimant then requested the President of the Tribunal de grande instance to
order that an arbitral tribunal be constituted. He so ordered, and
UNESCO appealed to the Court of Appeal of Paris. UNESCO’s petition
was dismissed. To accept the claim of immunity, said the Court, would be
to prevent the claimant from having his case heard. The arbitral tribunal,
not UNESCO, had the authority to decide whether there was a bona fide
dispute. To deprive the claimant of access to the agreed arbitral jurisdiction would be ‘contrary to ordre public because it would be a denial of
justice and a violation of the terms of Article 6(1) of the European
Convention on Human Rights’.
The difficulty of this matter is to discern the line of demarcation between
cases of ‘acceptable’ immunity, on the one hand, and, on the other, the
Ruden42 and R. T. Johnson43 awards, where the Peruvian Government had
forbidden that judgments be pronounced in actions against the treasury,
resulting in refusal by the courts to assume jurisdiction. It is far more likely
that a legislative attempt to avoid legal responsibility by creating immunity
for public bodies will be characterised as denial of justice if the legislation is
special rather than general, if it emerges after a conflict has arisen and
seems calculated to have an effect on it, or if it is discriminatory in its effect.
De Visscher saw the point quite clearly – as an exception to the ‘general
rule’ he posited44 – when he wrote that:
one cannot consider a denial of justice to inhere in the absence of judicial or
administrative recourse against measures taken by superior authorities of the
State, the legislature or the government to the extent that this absence results
from the general legislation of the State and not from a measure of discrimination
against aliens.45
Today, international legal developments have transformed the ability of
states to circumscribe legal recourse by such ‘general legislation’.
Treaties, such as the European Convention and its Article 6(1), in effect
mandate general rights of redress, although the debate as to the residual
national right to restrict access in a proportionate manner and for a
legitimate interest remains open, as McElhinney v. Ireland 46 illustrates.
42
US v. Peru, Moore, Arbitrations at p. 1653. 43 US v. Peru, Ibid. at p. 1656.
A judgment declining jurisdiction is a denial of justice if there is no other avenue of
complaint: de Visscher at p. 396.
45
Ibid. at p. 395. 46 21 November 2001, (2001) 34 EHRR 322.
44
146
Denial of justice by outside interference
Targeted legislation
It is not unknown for states to trash the law to defeat the claims of
unpopular foreigners. Hot-headed politicians may seek public favour by
advancing narrow conceptions of the national interest by law or decree.
If local courts defer to such laws or decrees, they may incur the international responsibility of their state on account of gross incompetence in
failing to recognise either fundamental strictures on the retroactive application of laws, or evident acquired rights. But a more straightforward
analysis may lead to the conclusion that the legislature itself has interfered
in the judicial process to such an extent as to create a denial of justice.
Two famous examples will suffice. They both involved attempts to defeat
contractual rights.47
A Presidential Order of Bangladesh purporting to extinguish the contractual obligations of a state company gave rise to an ICC arbitration
and an award which found it ‘painfully, clear . . . that the Disputed Debts
Order was made for the sole purpose of being injected as a spoliatory
measure into the present arbitration’.48
A decree of the Portuguese Council of Ministers purporting to suspend
contractual rights of cancellation in favour of a state-owned shipyard by
extending a delivery date by two years was disregarded by an arbitral
tribunal of the Netherlands Arbitration Institute as contrary to ‘concepts
47
Professor Robert Jennings (as he then was) noted in 1961 that while some authors among
previous generations of scholars – Borchard (in 1919), Hyde (in 1945) and Jessup (in
1949) – had gone ‘so far as to maintain that international law did not permit intervention
founded only upon an alleged breach of a State contract’, they nevertheless considered
that ‘an arbitrary or confiscatory amendment of a State contract is in itself a tort’,
‘State Contracts in International Law’, (1961) 37 BYIL 156, at p. 159. In diplomatic
correspondence in 1860, the US Government observed that when its nationals do
business with citizens of a foreign country, or enter into private contracts abroad: ‘it is
not to be expected that either their own or the foreign Government is to be made a party
to this business or these contracts, or will undertake to determine any disputes to which
they may give rise. The case, however, is very much changed when no impartial tribunals
can be said to exist in a foreign country, or when they have been arbitrarily controlled by
the Government to the injury of our citizens. So, also, the case is widely different when the
foreign Government becomes itself a party to important contracts, and then not only fails to fulfill them, but
capriciously annuls them, to the great loss of those who have invested their time and labor
and capital from a reliance upon its own good faith and justice.’ (Letter of 3 May 1860
from Secretary of State Cass to Mr Dimitry, in F. Wharton (ed.), A Digest of the International
Law of the United States (3 vols., 2nd edn, Washington, DC: US Government Printing
Office, 1887), vol. II, at p. 615), emphasis added.)
48
Société des Grands Travaux de Marseille v. East Pakistan Development Corporation, award, (1980)
V Yearbook Commercial Arbitration 177 (Andrew Martin QC, sole arbitrator), at p. 181.
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Denial of Justice in International Law
of public policy and morality common to all trading nations’ notwithstanding that the contract was subject to Portuguese law.49 The decree
was couched in general terms; its benefit was conferred on any Portuguese
company which had been ‘declared to be in a critical economic condition’; but it thus gave the government unfettered discretion to apply the
decree to a single state enterprise facing a difficult litigation.
The victims of such manipulations are, of course, not only unpopular
foreigners. In the exceptionally important case of Stran Greek Refineries and
Stratis Andreadis v. Greece, an ad hoc tribunal had rendered a significant
award against the state.50 The headnote in the case report instantly
encapsulates the point: ‘Legislative annulment of arbitration award’.51
This annulment took the form of a law enacted by Parliament affirming
that contracts entered into in the period 1967–74 (when a military
dictatorship ruled the country) were repealed – and that that effect
extended to any arbitration clauses contained in them.52 Accordingly
any arbitral tribunals constituted under such contracts would ‘no longer
have jurisdiction’, and their awards ‘shall no longer be valid and enforceable’.53 It should be observed that the Greek Government had: (a) initially
insisted on arbitration (obtaining rulings by the Athens Court of First
Instance and the Athens Court of Appeal deferring to the arbitration
clause in the relevant contract); (b) participated in the proceedings; and
(c) subsequently lost its challenges to the award before the same two
courts. The law was promulgated while the government’s challenge to
the award before the Court of Cassation was pending. The Court of
49
Settenave Estaleiros Navais de Setubal SARL v. Settebello Ltd (McCrindle, Vischer, Brunner
(presiding)), unpublished, described in W. Laurence Craig, William W. Park and Jan
Paulsson, International Chamber of Commerce Arbitration (3rd edn, Dobbs Ferry,
NY: Oceana, 2000), at p. 104, note 28; and in Settebello Ltd v. Banco Totta and Acores,
Court of Appeal of England [1985] 1 WLR 1050.
50
In the amounts of some US$16 million, some 116 million drachmas, and half a million
French francs, all expressed as of 1978.
51
Stran Greek Refineries and Stratis Andreadis v. Greece, 9 December 1994, (1995) 19 EHRR 293.
52
The government later argued, before the European Court of Human Rights, that:
‘The democratic legislature had been under a duty to eradicate from public life the
residual traces of measures taken by the military regime. Mr Andreadis had been a
giant of the economy and the scheme that he had envisaged had at the time been on a
huge scale for a country the size of Greece. Moreover, the announcement of the
scheme had led, before the fall of the military regime, to one of the largest antidictatorship demonstrations.’ Ibid. at para. 45. This political argument was rejected
by the Court in these terms: ‘by rejoining the Council of Europe on 28 November 1974
and by ratifying the Convention, Greece undertook to respect the principle of the rule
of law.’ Ibid. at para. 46.
53
Law No. 1701/1987, Official Gazette 25 May 1987.
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Denial of justice by outside interference
Cassation then dismissed a challenge to the constitutionality of the law
and declared the award to be void.
The European Court of Human Rights held that Greece ‘infringed the
applicants’ rights under [Article 6(1)] by intervening in a manner which
was decisive to ensure that the – imminent – outcome of proceedings in
which it was a party was favourable to it’.54
Repudiation by a state of an agreement to arbitrate
There is no longer a vast gulf between national and international standards with respect to the right to the fair administration of justice. Both
national legislation and international law tend to seek to impose upon
states the duty – in principle, the realist will add – to treat nationals as well as
international law requires them to treat foreigners. Today, procedural
rights under ‘European law’, that is to say the international law of treaties,
are frequently invoked by Europeans when they appear before their home
courts.
Thus, in principle, or as one might say with a pejorative connotation in
theory, there is nothing to fear from national norms; they tend to conform
to international standards. Yet experience has shown, time and time
again, that it is crucial for the foreign victim of miscarriages of justice to
achieve a neutral (i.e. international) adjudication of his grievance.
Whatever the rosy rhetoric about the equality of treatment of nationals
and foreigners, the very fact of being foreign creates an inequality. The
foreigner’s obvious handicap – his lack of citizenship – is usually compounded by vulnerabilities with respect to many types of influence:
political, social, cultural.
How international law deals with the purported restriction of a foreigner’s access to a previously accepted international forum is therefore a
matter of paramount importance. We have already seen, in the immediately preceding section on ‘Targeted legislation’, how the European
Court of Justice concluded that a Greek law designed to void the authority
of an arbitral tribunal once it had rendered an award unfavourable to the
government was a violation of the right to a fair trial, which it held to
‘preclude any interference by the legislature with the administration of
justice designed to influence the judicial determination of the dispute’.55
54
55
Stran Greek Refineries and Stratis Andreadis v. Greece (1995) 19 EHRR 293, at para. 50.
Ibid. at para. 49. Another notable feature of the case emerged by reason of the claim
that Greece had violated not only Article 6(1) of the European Convention on Human
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Denial of Justice in International Law
(The ‘judicial’ determination in question was whether the Greek Court of
Cassation should annul the award.) That section also recalled the infamous East Pakistan Development Corporation and Settebello cases.
In the first Lauterpacht Lectures in 1983, Judge Stephen Schwebel
devoted one of his three presentations to what he called ‘Denial of Justice
by Governmental Negation of Arbitration’.56 This important contribution builds on valuable research, analysing a series of particularly significant cases from the first half of the twentieth century. Many of these cases
may have faded from the consciousness of scholars, practitioners and
adjudicators. Schwebel’s work brings them into current focus and is indispensable to
any in-depth consideration of this subject. Rather than to summarise a text that
deserves a full reading, we will consider some subsequent precedents.
Himpurna v. Indonesia,57 an arbitration under the UNCITRAL Rules,
arose out of an alleged governmental guarantee of the performance of the
national electricity company, PLN, under a power supply agreement.
The government had confirmed its undertaking to arbitrate in formal
Terms of Appointment executed at a time when PLN’s liability had not
been established – and pursuant to which the claimant agreed to postpone
the arbitration against the government until and unless PLN was held
Rights (the right to a fair trial) but also Article 1 of Protocol No. 1, which declares every
person’s entitlement to ‘the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions’. The Court agreed –
unanimously – with the Applicants’ thesis that as of the moment the offending law was
voted by the Parliament, they had a ‘right’ in the sums awarded which should be
equated to a ‘possession’ within the meaning of the just-quoted phrase. The
implications of this holding will not escape students of investment treaties, which
invariably protect property rights. Interference with arbitral awards is thus subject to
censure on a foundation additional to the obvious duty to afford ‘fair and equitable
treatment’. (Given the fact that choses in action may be assigned for value, a case could
be made for the proposition that the logic of Stran Greek Refineries would extend to
pre-award interference with the arbitral process.)
56
This is the title of Part II of International Arbitration: Three Salient Problems. The origins of
Judge Schwebel’s contemplation of this topic may be traced to an article he
co-authored with J. Gillis Wetter in 1966, ‘Arbitration and the Exhaustion of Local
Remedies’, (1966) 60 AJIL 484; reprinted in Stephen M. Schwebel, Justice in
International Law: Selected Readings 171 (Cambridge: Grotius, 1994), with a new postscript
at 191. The thrust of the original article was put in a nutshell (with approval) by
O’Connell: ‘Where a State and an alien agree to arbitrate disputes relating to a
contract in terms that indicate that it is to be the exclusive remedy . . . no other local
remedy may be exacted’, D. P. O’Connell, International Law (2nd edn, London: Stevens
& Sons, 1970), at p. 1059.
57
Himpurna California Energy Ltd v. Indonesia, interim award, 26 September 1999; final
award, 16 October 1999, extracts in (2000) XXV Yearbook Commercial Arbitration 109 (de
Fina, Abdurrasyid, Paulsson (presiding)). Two other awards, for all substantive
purposes identical, were handed down the same days in the parallel case brought by
Himpurna’s sister company, Patuha Power Ltd.
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Denial of justice by outside interference
liable for damages. After PLN had been held guilty of breach of contract58
and had failed to pay the damages awarded, the government argued that
the arbitral process should be suspended because of two procedural
developments.
One of those developments came to attract considerable notice, but is
not of direct relevance to the notion of denial of justice. It concerned the de
facto withdrawal of the Indonesian arbitrator in the final stages of the
arbitration. It transpired that representatives of the government physically prevented him from attending the final hearings and instructed him
to cease communication with the other members of the arbitral tribunal.
(The findings of fact of the remaining members of the tribunal in relation
to this incident59 were confirmed by the missing arbitrator, who at the
time of the incident was Chairman of the Indonesian National
Arbitration Association, and a former Deputy Attorney General of
Indonesia, when his memoirs were published in 2003.60) Under the
circumstances, the truncated tribunal, relying on international precedents
to the effect that an unauthorised withdrawal of an arbitrator is unlawful
and is not entitled to paralyse the original intent of parties having agreed
to arbitration, proceeded to render a final award.61
Of greater present interest was an event which occurred prior to the
interference with the arbitrator, namely the government’s attempt to halt
the arbitral proceedings by successfully applying for an injunction from
the Indonesian courts. This injunction was obtained at the behest of
Pertamina, the Indonesian national oil and gas company.
The question for the arbitral tribunal was whether it was bound to
cease its work as a result of the injunction. It found that the initiative of the
municipal court was attributable to the state. It also found, after a detailed
review of the laws under which Pertamina existed and functioned, that
the company was wholly subservient to the government. It noted that
58
Himpurna California Energy Ltd v. PT (Persero) Perusahaan Listruik Negara, award, 4 May
1999, (2000) XXV Yearbook Commercial Arbitration 13 (de Fina, Setiawan SH, Paulsson
(presiding)). Another award, for all substantive purposes identical, was handed down
the same day in the parallel case brought by Patuha Power Ltd.
59
(2000) XXV Yearbook Commercial Arbitration 154–166.
60
The relevant chapter is published in extenso in 18(6) Mealey’s International Arbitration Report
29 (H. Priyatna Abdurrasyid, ‘They Said I was Going to be Kidnapped’).
61
See V. V. Veeder, ‘The Natural Limits to the Truncated Tribunal: The German Case
of the Soviet Eggs and the Dutch Abduction of the Indonesian Arbitrator’, in
R. Briner, L. Y. Fortier, K. P. Berger and J. Bredow (eds.), Law of International Business
and Dispute Settlement in the 21st Century – Liber Amicorum Karl-Heinz Böckstiegel (Cologne:
Bredow, 2001).
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Denial of Justice in International Law
although the government alleged that it was obligated to yield to the
injunction and not to participate in the arbitration, it had presented no
evidence of any attempts on its part to convince the court not to issue the
injunction. To the contrary, the government had explicitly reserved ‘its
right’ to seek orders of contempt of court and the sequestration of the
claimant’s assets if the latter were to pursue the case.
The tribunal concluded that the government did not have a valid
excuse for declining to participate further in the arbitral proceedings. It
held that ‘to prevent an arbitral tribunal from fulfilling its mandate in
accordance with procedures formally agreed to by the Republic of
Indonesia is a denial of justice’, and that the government was in default
under the Terms of Appointment. The tribunal accordingly proceeded to
fulfil its mission even though the government declined to participate
further. (Written memorials having been provided by both sides, the
only remaining phase involved the hearing of witnesses. Without changing the legal place of arbitration, Jakarta, the tribunal summoned the
parties to such a hearing at the Peace Palace in The Hague, using its
authority under Article 16(2) of the applicable UNCITRAL Arbitration
Rules, which provides that the arbitral tribunal ‘may hear witnesses and
hold meetings for consultation among its members at any place it deems
appropriate, having regard to the circumstances of the arbitration’. The
government sought to obtain an injunction from the District Court of The
Hague. Its application was denied.62 That set the stage for the incident at
Schiphol Airport, where Indonesian officials intercepted the Indonesian
arbitrator and prevailed upon him to return to Jakarta without communicating with the other arbitrators. In the event, the hearing was exceedingly brief, as the government did not appear to avail itself of the
opportunity to question witnesses, and the claimant was content to let
the written witness statements speak for themselves.)
For present purposes, the nub of Himpurna v. Indonesia may be found in
the following holding: ‘it is a denial of justice for the courts of a State to
prevent a foreign party from pursuing its remedies before a forum to the
authority of which the State consented, and on the availability of which the
foreigner relied in making investments explicitly envisaged by that
State’.63
62
Indonesia v. Himpurna California Energy Ltd, et al., Order of the President of the
Arrondissementsrechtbank (Court of First Instance), The Hague, 21 September 1999,
(2000) XXV Yearbook Commercial Arbitration 469.
63
(2000) XXV Yearbook Commercial Arbitration 109, at pp. 182–183 (emphasis added).
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Denial of justice by outside interference
Judge Schwebel commented as follows:
The holdings of these Tribunals that a State commits a denial of justice under
international law when its courts lend themselves to interdiction and frustration of
international arbitral processes are particularly significant. In classical international law, a State denies justice when its courts are closed to foreign nationals or
render judgments against foreign nationals that are arbitrary. In modern international law, a State denies justice no less when it refuses or fails to arbitrate with a
foreign national when it is legally bound to do so, or when it, whether by executive,
legislative or judicial action, frustrates or endeavours to frustrate international
arbitral processes in which it is bound to participate. These cases are of exceptional
importance in recognizing and applying this cardinal principle.64
In the Waste Management II case described in the section on ‘No responsibility for misapplication of national law’ in Chapter 4, the claimant sought
to extend this notion to the effect that a denial of justice arises where the
government simply makes it burdensome (not impossible) to use the
arbitral mechanism. The foreign investor’s subsidiary had entered into
a concession agreement with the City of Acapulco. The agreement called
for arbitration under the Rules of Mexico’s National Chamber of
Commerce (CANACO). A claim was brought for non-payment by the
City of fees owed on account of services rendered by the concessionaire.
The City objected to the jurisdiction of the arbitral tribunal on the
grounds that the concession agreement was necessarily subject to the
jurisdiction of Mexican administrative courts. It also asked a Mexican
court to halt the arbitration for the same reason. When CANACO asked
for an advance payment from each party on account of the arbitrators’
fees, the City refused to pay. The claimant thus faced the prospect of
having to fund the arbitration alone. Given the position taken by the City,
the claimant withdrew its case.
The City was clearly entitled to raise jurisdictional objections without
being deemed to commit an international delict. Even if the objection had
64
‘Injunction of Arbitral Proceeding and Truncation of the Tribunal’, (2003) 18(4)
Mealey’s International Arbitration Report 33, at p. 38 (notes omitted). In Bechtel Enterprises
International (Bermuda) Ltd et al v. Overseas Private Investment Corporation, award, 3
September 2003, (2004) 16 World Trade and Arbitration Materials 417 (Renfrew,
Kay, Layton (presiding)), a tribunal operating under the Rules of the American
Arbitration Association held that the Indian courts and various entities controlled by
or representing the Indian Government had ‘enjoined and otherwise taken away
Claimants’ international arbitration remedies . . . in violation of established principles
of international law, in disregard of India’s commitments under the UN Convention as
well as the Indian Arbitration Act’. The Claimants were held entitled to recover under
an insurance policy covering expropriation.
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Denial of Justice in International Law
been absurd, the delict would have arisen only if the Mexican legal system
had upheld it. To the contrary, CANACO rejected a preliminary jurisdictional argument by the City on the grounds that it was a matter for the
arbitral tribunal. As for the court proceedings relating to arbitrability, they
were never concluded. The international arbitral tribunal observed that
Mexican jurisprudence suggested that the City’s objection would fail. At any
rate, it was sufficient that the investor had not demonstrated the contrary. It
is thus only in connection with the issue of fees that Waste Management II is of
particular interest in connection with claims of denial of justice by way of
impeding recourse to arbitration.
The tribunal noted that the deposit sought was ‘very large by local
standards’ (the equivalent of some US $500,000). On the other hand, ‘the
claim was large and threatened to be complex’. Although the international arbitrators would have deemed ‘evidence of collusion between
CANOCO and the City’ to be ‘very material’, the evidence before the
tribunal showed that CANOCO ‘apparently behaved in a proper and
impartial way’. The tribunal concluded that ‘the discontinuance of the
arbitration, a decision made by the Claimant on financial grounds, did
not implicate the Respondent in any internationally wrongful act’.
This outcome was without doubt correct. Frustrating as it may seem to
claimants, there is no absolute international duty to finance arbitral proceedings. True, under some rules of arbitration such participation is to be
deemed a contractual undertaking, and there is support for the proposition
that a non-payment in connection with arbitration under such rules entitles
the moving party to relief by way of summary judgment.65 Yet the amount
requested by the tribunal or the arbitral institution may be the consequence
of the articulation of what the respondent deems to be an abusive or
tactically inflated claim. Nor is the rule universal; some rules of arbitration
avoid this type of dispute-within-a-dispute by providing that the claimant
must pay the entire advance. It cannot be posited that the refusal of a public
respondent to contribute to the costs of arbitration immediately generates
an international wrong imputable to the state.
Might it be said that the frustration of an agreed arbitral mechanism
exposes the author of the mischief to the possibility that other legal
systems will organise alternative arbitral proceedings in order to overcome the potential denial of justice? The question may seem far-fetched,
and so it may be. Nevertheless that was the thrust of an unusual and
65
See Georgios Petrochilos, Procedural Law in International Arbitration (Oxford University
Press, 2004), at p. 126 and the sources cited there.
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Denial of justice by outside interference
much-commented-upon judgment in 2001, National Iranian Oil Company
(NIOC) v. Israel,66 in which the Paris Court of Appeal appointed an
arbitrator at the request of NIOC in order precisely to remedy a prospective denial of justice. The dispute had arisen from a contract entered
into in 1968 for the construction of an oil pipeline. It contained an ad hoc
arbitration clause calling for the nomination of one arbitrator by each
party. In the event the two arbitrators so named failed to select the third
member of the arbitral tribunal, the President of the International
Chamber of Commerce was to make the appointment. There was no
provision for an appointing authority in the event one of the parties failed
to make its nomination. Nor was a seat of arbitration specified.
The dispute arose in 1994. Relations between Iran and Israel had
profoundly deteriorated in the aftermath of the Iranian revolution of
1979. When NIOC sought to initiate arbitral proceedings, Israel failed
to name an arbitrator. NIOC therefore asked the President of the Tribunal
de grande instance of Paris to do so, as it was entitled to do under Article 1493
of the New Code of Civil Procedure in cases where France is the seat of
the arbitration, or French procedural law is otherwise applicable.
The French judge rejected the application on jurisdictional grounds,
noting that neither of those two requirements was fulfilled. In reaching his
initial decision, he observed that Israeli law provides for judicial appointment of an arbitrator in the event of party default, and that therefore
NIOC had not established a denial of justice. NIOC therefore explored
the possibility of seizing the Israeli courts, only to be informed by its Israeli
lawyers that any attempt on its behalf to initiate proceedings before an
Israeli court would be rejected as a result of a prior judicial determination
(in an unrelated case, but apparently having an effect equivalent to stare
decisis) that Iran was an ‘enemy state’. NIOC therefore returned before the
Parisian judge.
Once again, he rejected NIOC’s application. Denial of justice as an
independent basis of jurisdiction of the courts of France, he reasoned, is
not demonstrated unless the plaintiff proves – in addition to showing some
connection between the dispute and France – that it is practically impossible for him to seize a foreign jurisdiction; the judge was not satisfied that
it was impossible for NIOC to seek relief from either an Israeli court (since
the prior judicial refusal to hear Iranian parties might be overturned) or
an Iranian court.
66
2002 Revue de l’arbitrage 427; aff’d Cour de cassation, 1 February 2005, Gazette du Palais,
27–28 April 2005 at p. 34.
155
Denial of Justice in International Law
This decision was reversed on appeal. Two elements of this reversal
raised the eyebrows of many scholars and practitioners. The first concerns
the rule to the effect that there is no recourse against the decisions of
judges who make orders when asked to do so in aid of arbitration; the
Court of Appeal circumvented this restriction by declaring an exception if
the lower court judge, as it found here, had exceeded his powers or
violated a fundamental procedural norm. The other concerns the apparent lack of jurisdiction of the French courts, which the Court of Appeal
overcame by creating, in effect, a third basis of jurisdiction under Article
1493, namely ‘if a denial of justice abroad is established’. The Court
added that ‘the right for a party to an arbitration agreement to have its
claims submitted to an arbitral tribunal is a rule of public policy’.
Nevertheless, French judicial intervention could not occur unless it is
‘justified by a link with France’. In the case at hand, it found that a
sufficient link was extant because of the reference to the ICC, which
notwithstanding its international functions and personnel is a French legal
entity and has its headquarters in Paris.
Leaving aside jurisdictional issues, the Court’s finding of a denial of
justice may be defended as such, but hardly in its reasoning. It is not
necessarily the case that a party to an arbitration agreement has ‘a right to
have its claims submitted to an arbitral tribunal’; the proposition may
sound well-intentioned, but the expression of an intent to create an
arbitral mechanism is not sufficient to overcome the failure to specify or
refer to a reliable arbitral mechanism. One can only wonder what support
the Court thought it had for such a wide-sweeping pronouncement.
The arbitration agreement may be defective; there may have been a
precondition to arbitration which has not been met; or the claim may be
unarbitrable according to some applicable law. A court’s judgment that
these, or other, grounds make it inappropriate to name an arbitrator is not
readily to be equated to a denial of justice, nor should it readily be
overturned by the courts of another country. The fact that a party is
frustrated in its attempts to initiate arbitral proceedings is not, in and of
itself, a denial of justice. Arbitral justice is not the only justice; a party
which finds that its attempt to create an arbitral mechanism fails must also
prove that it could not avail itself of such jurisdictions as are competent in
the absence of a workable arbitration agreement. Such proof is not
satisfied by speculation as to the inimical attitudes of the courts that
might be seized (e.g. those of Israel), or as to the unlikelihood that they
would be respected by the recalcitrant party (e.g. an assumption that
Israel would not accept an Iranian judicial decision as legitimate).
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Denial of justice by outside interference
The analysis is different when the dispute involves a state as a party, and
that state refuses to give effect to its promise to arbitrate. The denial of justice
in NIOC v. Israel did not require inaction of the Israeli courts; it was
consummated when the government refused to name an arbitrator. This
was a denial of justice not because all parties have a right to the implementation of their arbitration agreement, but because the government had made
a promise to a foreign party that the justice it would vouchsafe was that of
arbitration. The failure to respect this promise, as demonstrated above, is an
international delict. Applying international law as a part of French law, the
French courts (assuming once more that they had jurisdiction) would be
entitled to find that there had been a denial of justice.
There was therefore a conceivably adequate basis for the Court of
Appeal of Paris to reach the conclusion it did, but the same cannot be said
for the remedy it ordered. For a court or tribunal to find that there has
been a denial of justice is one thing; but quite another to proceed
to administer justice in the place of the delinquent state. As will be seen
in Chapter 8, the proper remedy lies in damages, and may involve an
assessment of the merits of the dispute. In the annals of international law,
NIOC v. Israel appears to be a unique case of judicial substitute performance, perhaps confirming the adage that hard cases make bad law.
Governmental interference
Although the independence or otherwise of the courts is irrelevant for the
purpose of attributing international responsibility for judicial acts or
inaction to a state (see Chapter 3), it may be quite fundamental in terms
of proving the grievance. Whenever aliens have a dispute with the
executive, it is difficult to accept that the municipal courts may properly
deal with the matter if they are not independent. Moreover, the requirement of exhausting local remedies would be pointless if the relevant
institutions did not possess the autonomy necessary for impartial judgment.67 In sum, the absence of an independent judiciary may be fatal to
67
This requirement of independence encompasses not only the judiciary, but also other
crucial institutions in the justice system, most notably lawyers and other advocates,
as recognised by the United Nations. The UN has espoused not only the Basic
Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary (adopted by the Seventh United
Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, UN
Doc. A/CONF.121/22/Rev.1, at p. 59) calling on governments to guarantee the
independence of the judiciary and enshrine it ‘in the Constitution or the law of the
country’, but also the Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers (adopted by the Eighth
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Denial of Justice in International Law
the defence of a state against a claim of denial of justice in cases where
executive governmental acts were under review.
There are two dominant precedents. The first is Robert E. Brown,68
which has been sufficiently described in the section on ‘Denial of justice
by non-judicial authority’ in Chapter 3. The second is Idler.
The full story of Jacob Idler’s dealings with Simon Bolı́var’s armies
would require not pages, but volumes. During four years, from 1817 to
1821, described in the award as ‘the most uncertain perhaps in the long
struggle of the Spanish – American provinces for liberty’,69 Idler and his
associates shipped vast quantities of arms and army stores to Venezuela,
where these supplies were used in the great liberation. In the end, a number
of invoices and other charges, totalling nearly a quarter of a million
dollars,70 remained unpaid. It so remained for seventy years. The matter
attracted the attention of the press and politicians. It was the object of
repeated parliamentary debates in Washington as well as in Caracas.
Lengthy intergovernmental negotiations continued until 1866, when a
treaty was signed calling for international adjudication of the claim. But
that experience was not a success. As Jackson Ralston was to write in 1929:
‘The integrity of the conduct of the commission was attacked by Venezuela,
and its career forms the blackest spot in the history of arbitrations.’71
Another twenty years went by until a new commission was formed under
a treaty signed in 1885, this time ‘one of the ablest up to that time’.72
United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders,
UN Doc. A/CONF.144/28/Rev.1, at p. 118) that promulgate various guidelines for
governments in order to ensure that lawyers are able to perform their functions as an
element in the justice system effectively and appropriately.
68
US v. Great Britain, 23 November 1923, VI RIAA 120.
69
Jacob Idler v. Venezuela, Moore, Arbitrations at p. 3491, at 3493.
70
Venezuela’s annual revenue was estimated in 1885 as only five million dollars; Rice
Report of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, cited in Moore, Arbitrations at
pp. 1669–74.
71
J. Ralston, International Arbitration from Athens to Locarno (Stanford University Press, 1929),
at p. 221. It was not only Venezuela which complained about this commission, which
comprised two nationals of Venezuela and one of the US and sat in Caracas, but also
disappointed US claimants. The US Congress determined that there had been fraud in
the appointment of the umpire, and that the US commissioner had extorted fees from
successful claimants, H. R. Rep. No. 787, 44th Cong., 1st Sess. at VI (1875), referred to
in W. Michael Reisman, Nullity and Revision: The Review and Enforcement of International
Judgments and Awards (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,1971), at p. 495. Both the
House and the Senate recommended that the US stop all payments to successful
claimants and that a new commission be created.
72
Ibid. This commission sat in Washington. The aggregate amount it awarded to the US
claimants was lower than that of its predecessor.
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Denial of justice by outside interference
But we must return in time. While Idler’s programme of supplies was
still under way, Venezuela united with New Granada to form the
Republic of Colombia. The pre-existing debts of each component of the
new state were acknowledged as a national debt by the Colombian
Congress in 1821. Bolı́var became president of the new Republic,
which was divided into ten subentities; one of them was called the
Department of Venezuela. Bolı́var himself examined the Idler invoices
in 1827 and decided that they should be paid from the general treasury in
Bogotá. The matter was then complicated by a suit against Idler in
Caracas brought by the treasurers of the Venezuelan Department on
account of alleged failures to credit past payments. Nevertheless in late
1828 the Colombian secretary of the treasury wrote to Idler that ‘His
Excellency [Bolı́var] has directed me to say that the government acknowledges the justness of your claim, but that the present circumstances of the
treasury do not permit its payment. You are therefore to wait some time
further in the assurance that soon you will be paid.’
The very next day Idler was ordered by the intendente of Caracas not to
leave the jurisdiction until the suit against him had been resolved. On
1 January 1830, Venezuela reasserted its independence. The following
week the treasury court in Caracas ordered that the Idler account be
determined by an umpire, a certain G. B. Sprotto. The latter then issued
an award in favour of Idler, albeit with a substantial deduction on account
of past overpayments. Notwithstanding this award, the Caracas prefecture issued an order dated 31 August 1830 to the effect that Idler should
provide a bond or other security for the ‘balance now standing against
him’ (sic) and that thereafter a new calculation of his accounts would be
undertaken.
Idler did not comply with this order, nor did the courts – at this stage –
accommodate the executive branch. To the contrary, in August 1831
Sprotto’s award was confirmed in court. That confirmation was disallowed on appeal; a certain José Cadenas was appointed as ‘revising
umpire’ and rendered a lengthy award in September 1832. This decision
was also in Idler’s favour, although it further reduced his balance (but by
less than $2,000). The court of first instance ordered that Cadenas’ award
be communicated to both parties. Each of them assented in writing to its
entry. The court then declared that the government should pay its debt to
Idler; this judgment was affirmed by the superior court. The treasury
nevertheless refused to make payment, now raising the objection that only
the Supreme Court of Justice had authority to deal with the matter. Idler
then petitioned the Supreme Court which, in December 1832, after
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Denial of Justice in International Law
‘a review of the case from its inception’, found against the government
and declared that its judgment ‘settles forever the matter’.
That turned out to be a hollow declaration. The council of government
quickly took up the matter and resolved, notwithstanding the Supreme
Court judgment, not to make payment until Idler had presented his case to
unidentified ‘plenipotentiaries’ who ‘are to be appointed’ and who would
apportion the debt of Colombia. Six weeks later, the Supreme Court sought to
assert its authority and decreed that this resolution was entitled to no effect:
because otherwise the validity and strength given by law to the final decisions of
the courts of justice of competent jurisdiction, upon full knowledge of the facts
and the law of the case, and in faithful compliance with the precepts of law,
would be weakened and destroyed.73
This assertion of authority did not secure the release of any funds from the
executive branch, which simply disregarded the Supreme Court. By now
Idler had been away from home for ten years; he decided to return to the
US and to petition his own president.
In his absence, and without notice to him, the council of government
prepared a 67-page analysis of the case which it submitted to the Supreme
Court along with a motion that it annul its previous judgment. Two of the
four judges excused themselves from hearing this application. They were
replaced by appointees ‘from the Caracas bar’. Idler received notice of this
action by letter rogatory only twelve days before the expiration of the time
limits for his appearance. He made no appearance; nor did he appoint
counsel. The Supreme Court declared in 1837 that it was not competent to
annul its previous affirmation of a lower-court judgment; the matter properly belonged to the inferior court. The matter was then taken up before the
Superior Court of Caracas, with no notice to Idler. A new judgment was
entered, purportedly ‘restoring the whole subject to the condition in which
it was’ on the date of the order of 31 August 1830 – i.e. before the Cadenas
award. The council of government quickly ‘complied’ with this decision
and informed a commission sitting in Bogotá (charged with the task of
adjusting the accounts between the separated countries) that ‘nothing
remained to Idler than to pay what he owed’.
This was far from the end of the story. ‘Suffice it to say, almost every, if
not every, administration from Jackson’s to Grant’s contributed to [the
diplomatic history of the case] under the almost constant stress of urgency
by the contractors or their descendants.’74 But the facts already stated are
73
Moore, Arbitrations, at p. 3501.
74
Ibid.
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Denial of justice by outside interference
sufficient for an understanding of the international award ultimately
rendered pursuant to the US–Venezuela treaty of 1885.
The award is of a length that excludes full treatment in these pages. Its
four key conclusions are:
(i)
The composition of the Supreme Court when it dealt with the
resubmitted case in Idler’s absence was illicit.75
(ii) The purported defeasance of Idler’s contractual rights was based on
an extraordinary notion of ancient Spanish law to the effect that the
sovereign could invoke an exceptional so-called mechanism of
restitutio in integrum, by which individuals could avoid contractual
undertakings entered into on their behalf when they were minors.
The commission clearly considered it preposterous to attempt to
extend this privilege to the Venezuelan Government.76 It held that
the alleged doctrine, said to operate so as to undo contracts and
indeed judgments, could not be invoked against Idler.
(iii) The Superior Court of Caracas had had no jurisdiction. Jurisdiction
would have existed in the case of an ‘action upon the record’, i.e. not
an independent suit but a sequel to a case where Idler could still
have been deemed an active party, but such an action was timebarred; nor could it have been deemed to have been commenced by
the mistaken application to the Supreme Court.77
(iv) Venezuela had committed a denial of justice. The American Minister
at Caracas was officially told in 1840 that the judicial proceedings had
finally determined that the matter of Idler’s claim should be treated as
an ‘administrative and economic question of the government’ rather
than a ‘judicial proceeding’. Now, the government was ‘disposed’ to
proceed to a new determination of accounts which Idler and his
attorneys would be free to attend. The commission concluded:
‘The government thus interpreted the judgments as taking the case
out of the hands of the courts, to be proceeded with in a nonjudicial –
i.e. ‘administrative and economic’ – manner before its own accounting officers of the treasury, as it might be disposed to direct. That is, in
effect, the government proposed to decide the Idler case itself.
75
A key passage of the commission’s reasoning is reproduced in the section on
‘Manipulation of the composition of courts’ in this chapter.
76
A key passage of the commission’s reasoning is reproduced in the section on ‘Gross
incompetence’ in Chapter 7.
77
A key passage of the commission’s reasoning is reproduced in the section on
‘Illegitimate assertion of jurisdiction’ in Chapter 7.
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Denial of Justice in International Law
The litigation before the courts was put an end to, and thereby the
contracts, in so far as they remained unfulfilled (if there were any),
were for all practical purposes annulled; for the government’s action
and reiterated opinion left no room for question what it would do. We
have seen restitutio could not reach these contracts. It is believed it
never contemplated such results as to judgments.
The supreme court for the case knew – must have known – that the
order of August 31 was impossible of execution, and had been from
the very day of its entry nearly ten years before. Its affirmance [sic] of
the alleged superior court judgment annulling proceedings back to
that order, leaving it to stand, could have had but one purpose –
to switch the case from the lines of judicial determination; in short, to
dismiss it. We have no hesitation in saying the effect of these judgments
was a denial of justice.78
By any standards, the Idler case appears as a remarkable instance of
governmental manipulation of the judicial branch. The commission
noted that the government had communicated with the Supreme Court
about the case before making its ultimate application for reversal.79 The
commission also stressed that the government had previously assented to
the entry of an award rendered by a local court-appointed umpire, and
then refused to pay it. In these circumstances:
the reorganization of the court so as to change its personnel, and the substitution of
a temporary fiscal for the regular officer, for this one case, both, too, in violation
of the Colombian statute extended still to Venezuela; the fact that this was the
first and the last time the republic in its own behalf ever claimed a right to the
ancient remedy, asserted in the right of succession from the Spanish King, when
Spain had abolished it more than two hundred years before, except in a few cases
among which the Idler case could not by possibility be classed; the final decree
exactly in accordance with the prayer of the treasurers, in their report of May 2,
1829, and the wishes of the government; and the practical outcome, namely, the
ending of the litigation and virtual extinction of the contracts so far as they were not
yet satisfied; one considering these things can not, as seems to us, well escape the
78
79
Moore, Arbitrations, at pp. 3516–3517 (emphasis in the original).
In The Orient (US v. Mexico), the US–Mexican Commission, under the Convention of 11
April 1839, considered evidence that a government official had ‘agreed’ with a judge to
confirm the validity of the confiscation of a vessel. The Commission observed: ‘A judge
who would thus, two weeks in advance of a trial and before the testimony was
examined, pledge himself to make a particular decision, would not be likely to be
very scrupulous in the examination of the evidence, and certainly could claim no very
great degree of respect for his decision’, Moore, Arbitrations, at p. 3231.
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conviction that it was the voice of Idler’s opponents which found expression in
the judgments of 1838 and 1839, and not that either of justice or of the supreme
court of justice.
A foreign citizen in litigation with a sovereign before his own courts is entitled
to no special favors; but . . . ‘ordinary justice’ is his right in the eye of the public
law. This Idler did not get. The ‘justice’ attempted to be meted out to him,
whatever else could be said of it, was certainly not ‘ordinary justice.’
Our conclusion is, from the foregoing considerations, that the proceedings in
restitutio were, as against Idler, and are, as against the claimants, a nullity. This is
the best we can say of them.80
Manipulation of the composition of courts
One of the findings of the US–Venezuela commission in the Idler case,
discussed in some detail in the preceding section on ‘Governmental
interference’, was that when it rendered a judgment repudiating its own
previous decisions in the matter, thus dramatically reversing the foreign
claimant’s fortunes, the Supreme Court was constituted illicitly. The
commission reasoned as follows:
The difficulty is not that the court at Caracas was filled by members from the bar
for this case, or that two judges made the appointments. But that this was done
without the authority of law. If such a proceeding has a parallel in common-law
jurisprudence it has escaped our notice. Venezuela could, of course, constitute
her courts as she desired, but having established them, it was Idler’s right, if his
affairs were drawn in litigation there, to have them adjudicated by the courts
constituted under the forms of law. There are instances where the action of tribunals
presided over by de facto judges, acting under color of authority, has been upheld
upon satisfactory grounds, but we think the doctrine would not apply in such a
case as this. If the Colombian law of 1830 was in force when the court was
organized for the Idler case, as seems to have been the fact, the judges were
prohibited from exercising any ‘other powers than those which are assigned to them,’ and
as the power of appointment was not among those assigned to the minority of the
court, the acts of the two judges in appointing the other two ad hoc, were not only
not under color of law, but in violation of its express provisions. A body so
constituted could not have legal validity. Its acts could not bind absent parties.
They would be utterly void.81
No further comment seems necessary, except perhaps to observe that
exceptional jurisdictions immediately puts international adjudicators on
80
81
Moore, Arbitrations, at p. 3517 (emphasis in the original).
Ibid. at pp. 3508–3509 (emphasis in the original).
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Denial of Justice in International Law
their guard. Ad hoc reorganisation of the legal process cannot fail to raise
the spectre of executive fiat.82
Excessive public pressure
A theme recurrent in international awards relates to litigants’ legitimate
expectation that they be judged in an atmosphere of dispassionate serenity. In such circumstances, the issue is not so much a specific defect in the
process as the failure to secure an environment within which neutral
justice can be achieved.
In Solomon,83 for instance, the claim was decided against Panama on the
grounds that imprisonment of a US national had been ‘sustained, not by
the ordinary motive of punishing an offense, but by strong local sentiment’.84 The dissenting commissioner observed that the influence attributed to ‘strong popular feeling . . . is a mere assumption and not a proved
fact’.85 Proof that general animosity towards a foreigner has in fact influenced the course of justice is indeed unlikely to be established as a fact.
Such a conclusion is more likely to be derived from the combination of
the existence of grounds for belief that there was prejudice and a demonstrably suspect administration of the case. The latter, absent any other
explanation, leads the international adjudicator to the conclusion that the
former is likely to have influenced the outcome. The Solomon case itself
provides an illustration of this approach by inference.
Solomon had come to Panama with a detachment of the US Army
which was sent to the Chiriqui province to supervise elections in 1918.
Although the detachment stayed on to assist in maintaining public order,
Solomon was honourably discharged and went to work for William
Chase, who operated the San Juan ranch. It will be recalled that Chase
unsuccessfully brought a claim of his own relating to the non-recognition
by the Panamanian legal system of his title to that significant property.86
The commission noted that the US Army detachment had the duty of
82
In Fabiani, ibid. 4878, at p. 4882, the constitution of the State of Falcon-Zulia was
altered at the instigation of Fabiani’s local enemies so that a judge could be replaced by
the Governor – who was the brother of Fabiani’s arch-enemy’s lawyer – from a list of
‘advocates and citizens’. This was one of several elements which convinced the
President of the Swiss Confederation, sitting as sole arbitrator, that multiple instances
of denial of justice had been committed.
83
Abraham Solomon (US v. Panama), 29 June 1933, VI RIAA 370. 84 Ibid. at p. 373.
85
Ibid. at p. 375.
86
See the section on ‘Denial of justice by non-judicial authority’ in Chapter 3.
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Denial of justice by outside interference
assisting local police in arresting offenders against US nationals residing
in Chiriqui, and that ‘their presence was extremely distasteful both to the
public and to the authorities in Panama’. Moreover, the public perception
was that the real purpose of the US soldiers’ presence was ‘to protect
Chase in his alleged wrongful possession of San Juan’. Solomon’s association with the soldiers was ‘a ground for local enmity’; his employment by
Chase ‘accentuate[d his] unpopularity’.
The events that gave rise to Solomon’s imprisonment were the following. Solomon apprehended a trespassing poacher named Villamonte, and
turned him over to a US soldier. They both testified that their intention
was to turn him over to the police in a town twelve hours’ journey away.
While preparing for the trip, the US soldier locked up Villamonte, who
escaped before the expedition could head out.
It appears that some Panamanian officials became extraordinarily
determined to seize upon this incident to put Solomon away. An initial
complaint was made to the local mayor, who conducted an investigation
but found that there were no grounds for complaint. (Article 1575 of the
Panamanian Administrative Code allowed private persons to apprehend
trespassers under certain conditions.) The mayor was quickly replaced;
the new appointee instituted proceedings. A municipal judge was commissioned to conduct another investigation into a charge that Solomon
had wounded Villamonte; his conclusion was that there was no evidence
to that effect. Many months later, another judge nevertheless ordered
Solomon arrested for wounding and imprisoning Villamonte. Solomon
was ultimately incarcerated for one year on the sole charge of having
imprisoned Villamonte. The US Agent observed that although
Solomon’s condemnation had been secured principally on the testimony
of Villamonte, the trial court subsequently ordered the latter’s prosecution for perjury on account of his statements in the proceedings.
The Commission stated that in its opinion ‘there was no justification for
convicting Solomon for the particular offense of which he was found
guilty’. It noted that even if Article 1575 of the Administrative Code did
not avail Solomon, the penalty under Article 491 of the Penal Code for
wrongfully apprehending a person for the purpose of turning him over to
the authorities was a fine, not imprisonment. The courts had found
Solomon guilty of violating Article 488, dealing with criminal sequestration. The uncontradicted evidence was that Villamonte had been locked
up by the US soldier, not Solomon: ‘there was no evidence in the record
to sustain a finding that Solomon did not intend to turn Villamonte over
to the police’.
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Denial of Justice in International Law
Under these circumstances, the Commission found Solomon’s conviction and imprisonment to have been ‘a palpable injustice’. The concluding two paragraphs of the decision focused on the impact of local
sentiment rather than on a lack of proper legal foundation for the
conviction:
The fact that four separate investigations were instituted against Solomon, the
fact that the charge was changed to illegal imprisonment after an earlier charge
of wounding had been dropped for lack of evidence, and that the case was
revived after being moribund for months, the unexplained change of trial judges
during the final proceedings, the fact that the Fiscal in his address to the lower
court denounced the [American] soldiers, [whose presence was distasteful to
Panaman citizens] emphasized Solomon’s connection with them, and quite
improperly went out of his way to excite hostility to Solomon by reciting a
story about him which had no relation to any evidence in the record, all taken
together lend credence to the theory that the proceeding was sustained, not by
the ordinary motive of punishing an offense, but by strong local sentiment. The
Commission cannot avoid the conclusion, arising largely out of Panama’s own
evidence and contentions, that the claimant’s conviction was unconsciously
influenced by strong popular feeling. So to hold is not to cast any personal
aspersions on the judges involved. The unavoidable susceptibility of local judges
to local sentiment is a matter of common knowledge. One of the primary
purposes of international arbitration is to avoid just such susceptibility, and to
remedy its consequences.87
The standard commentary on the work of the US–Panama Claims
Arbitrations is worth quoting with respect to Solomon:
The circumstances of this case, as shown by the evidence and as defined by the
International Tribunal, exemplify clearly the fact that unless international justice
is to be frustrated by sentimental considerations, the review of the decisions of
courts of last resort is a necessity, although perhaps, on occasion, a disagreeable
necessity. National sentiment naturally revolts at the thought of submitting the
judgment of a supreme tribunal to the scrutiny of international inquiry under a
charge of being a perversion of justice . . . The history of international arbitration demonstrates clearly, however, that ‘local sentiment, prejudice, and pressure’ occasionally, though perhaps unconsciously, outweigh the normal and
predominating instinct of worthy men to do justice at all times, even as judges
of their fellow men . . . To maintain that cases in which there may possibly have
been such failure of justice shall not be submitted to the scrutiny of an impartial,
international tribunal is, of course, to sacrifice the cause of international justice
87
Abraham Solomon (US v. Panama), 29 June 1933, VI RIAA 370, at p. 373.
166
Denial of justice by outside interference
on the altar of local pride and sentiment . . . When it shall have become universally recognized, as it virtually is at present, that the judgments of supreme
municipal courts with respect to the rights of foreigners are properly subject to
review by international tribunals, the occasions for such review will naturally
decrease.88
With respect to the final paragraph of the award, the reporter observed
that:
denials of justice, recognizable by international tribunals, must not, of necessity,
proceed from judgments contaminated or influenced by improper motives of the
local judge, as has so frequently and unwisely been stated or implied by authorities in the past. Such decisions as this, which assists in making clear that denial
of justice, as understood in international law, may proceed from the innocent or
unconscious weaknesses of human nature, or from unique and uncontrollable
circumstances, as well as from such human weaknesses as make for the conscious
and purposeful corruption or perversion of justice, are valuable contributions in
the sane development of international law.89
Freeman cited Solomon as an example of an exception to the general rule
against the international reversal of national applications of national law,
i.e. as an instance of substantive denial of justice. For reasons stated in the
section on ‘Judgments involving a breach of national law’ in Chapter 4, it
is rather an illustration of why there is no exception; the Commissioners
did not presume to correct the Panamanian judiciary’s conception of the
crime of false imprisonment, but rather held that Panama had failed to
ensure circumstances under which Solomon could be fairly tried. This is
procedural denial of justice.
Freeman wrote that he was ‘frankly troubled’ by the difficulty of
reconciling the notion that misapplication of municipal law is not sufficient to constitute a denial of justice with the outcome in Solomon (with
which he was yet broadly in agreement). The impossible task of applying a
‘manifest injustice’ standard disappears if one simply drops the insistence
on finding exceptions to the rule, and rather concentrate on whether the
evidence is sufficient to conclude that there was procedural denial of
justice.
88
Bert L. Hunt, American and Panamanian General Claims Arbitration under the Conventions
between the United States and Panama of July 28, 1926, and December 17, 1932, US
Department of State Arbitration Series, No. 6 (Washington, DC, 1934), at
pp. 488–489.
89
Ibid. at p. 490.
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Denial of Justice in International Law
Failure to execute judgments
Governments are not obliged to satisfy judgments in favour of foreigners
against parties who might be insolvent, or who find ways to evade payment.
But they are held to the duty of providing officials who with reasonable
diligence and without discrimination put the imperium of the law at the
service of foreign judgment creditors. In the Fabiani case, the President of
Swiss Confederation, sitting as sole arbitrator, noted that the Government
of Venezuela had a constitutional duty to ‘assurer l’administration de la
justice’.90 Not only did the government not do so, but the President of
the Republic (Guzman Blanco) subverted the very purpose of the arbitral
award which Fabiani was seeking to enforce against a dishonest local
ex-partner by approving the fraudulent assignment of a railroad contract.
Other valuable maritime transport contracts were accorded to an accomplice of Fabiani’s adversary, with the effect of insulating the assets of the
award debtor.91 Finding denial of justice in the non-execution by the
Venezuelan court of an arbitral award rendered in France between
private French and Venezuelan businesses, the arbitrator included in
the delict such executive acts and omissions as bore ‘so immediately or
approximately upon the execution of said award as to have an appreciable effect thereon’.92
Denial of justice thus includes the failure to execute a final judgment.93
The judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in Timofeyev
v. Russia contains a remarkable factual description of the practical difficulties faced by the applicant when he sought to enforce his judgment
against the state before national courts: the obscurity of the judgment in
identifying the payor within the state administration, unlawful inaction by
the bailiff, meretricious interventions by authorities claiming powers of
supervisory review, and, in the end, the silent refusal to respond at all. The
unanimous judgment held that ‘the applicant should not pay the price of
90
Antoine Fabiani (no. 1) (France v. Venezuela), Moore, Arbitrations, 4878, at p. 4900.
Ibid. at pp. 4883 and 4888.
92
Ibid. at p. 4878. This was the award at the centre of yet a further case, when the
unrelenting claimant (by his government) sought to claim further damages from the
French–Venezuelan Commission, contending unsuccessfully that the Swiss award had
not disposed of all claims he was entitled to have heard under a protocol between the
two states; Antoine Fabiani (no. 2) (France v. Venezuela), 31 July 1905, X RIAA 83.
93
L. A. Podesta Costa and José Maria Ruda (eds.), Derecho internacional público (2 vols.,
Buenos Aires: TEA, 1984), vol. II, at p. 214; accord A. O. Adede, ‘A Fresh Look at the
Meaning of the Doctrine of Denial of Justice under International Law’, 1976 Canadian
Yearbook of International Law 86.
91
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Denial of justice by outside interference
these omissions of the State’ and that it was ‘unacceptable that a judgment
debt is not honoured for such a long period of time’. In a key passage, the
judges held that the ‘right to a court’ enshrined in Article 6(1) of the
European Convention on Human Rights:
would be illusory if a Contracting State’s domestic legal system allowed a final,
binding judicial decision to remain inoperative to the detriment of one party. It
would be inconceivable that Article [6(1)] should describe in detail procedural
guarantees afforded to litigants – proceedings that are fair, public and expeditious – without protecting the implementation of judicial decisions; to construe
Article 6 as being concerned exclusively with access to a court and the conduct of
proceedings would be likely to lead to situations incompatible with the principle
of the rule of law which the Contracting States undertook to respect when they
ratified the Convention. Execution of a judgment given by any court must
therefore be regarded as an integral part of the ‘trial’ for the purposes of
Article 6.94
This proposition has an established tradition in the customary international law of denial of justice, as seen in the Fabiani case. It is essential that
the duty is understood as extending beyond the formal judicial order of
execution; that may be only the beginning of the judgment creditor’s
travails.
A brilliant illustration is the Montano case, a grievance presented to the
US–Peruvian Claims Commission constituted under a treaty of 1863
which resulted in a remarkable success for the Peruvian claimant
(Esteban Montano).95 He was the owner of a vessel which in 1851 sank
in the Bay of San Francisco due to pilot error. Successfully pursuing the
pilots’ association, which enjoyed a monopoly granted by the state of
California, he was awarded the then considerable amount of US$24,151
by a US federal district court. He entrusted the judgment to a federal
marshal, who proved ineffectual in securing enforcement. The marshal
declined to make levy on a pilot boat which, as the award put it, ‘was
known as the property of the licensed pilots’ association’. The marshal
apparently relied on a statement by a third party claiming to have
purchased the boat. He therefore demanded a bond of indemnity,
which Montano did not give. Moreover, the marshal did not seek to
levy on the surety which the association was legally bound to maintain in
return for its monopoly, apparently on the lame excuse that someone had
94
95
Timofeyev v. Russia, 23 October 2003, [2003] ECHR 546, at para. 40.
Peru v. US, Moore, Arbitrations, at p. 1630. The case is also sometimes referred to as The
Eliza.
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Denial of Justice in International Law
told him that such an effort would be pointless because the association
had not in fact complied with its duty to furnish the sureties.
The US Attorney General contested the claim, arguing that there were
two classes of ‘officers of the law’, namely those who represented the
proprietary interests of the government, and those who ‘were the agents
of society itself, and were appointed only by the government in its capacity
of parens patriae’. The latter could be prosecuted for malfeasance, but did
not attract governmental liability.
The Umpire (General Herran) firmly rejected the US Government’s
arguments. The marshal, he wrote,
neglected the means at his disposal . . . The sentence of the court was not made
effective through the fault of the public officer who was under obligation to
execute it.96
The Umpire concluded that the US Government had been guilty of a
denial of justice and ordered it to pay to Montano the amount of his
judgment, plus eight years’ interest from the date of the failure of
enforcement. (The award was expressed ‘in the current money of the
U.S.’. The US Government chose to pay him in currency worth only
about $15,000 in gold. Montano protested, and thereafter successfully
prosecuted a second claim before the subsequent Peruvian Claims
Commission, established by a treaty of 1868.)
Inadequate measures against perpetrators of crimes
against foreigners
States have an international obligation, recognised by impressive
historical authority,97 to take adequate steps to apprehend and punish
96
Ibid. at p. 1635. See also De Sabla, where parcels of the claimant’s land had been
adjudicated to various individuals with the alleged justification that the public administrator was bound to make such adjudications in favour of unopposed applicants for
the land. The Commission determined that ‘the machinery of opposition, as actually
administered, did not constitute an adequate remedy to the claimant for the protection
of her property’. De Sabla (US v. Panama), 29 June 1933, VI RIAA 358, at p. 363.
97
See the lengthy footnote in Freeman at p. 369. A typical statement appears as follows in
the Janes case (US v. Mexico), Claims Commission, United States and Mexico, Opinions
of Commissioners, Washington 1927, 108, at para. 19: ‘non punishment must be
deemed to disclose some kind of approval of what has occurred, especially so if the
Government has permitted the guilty parties to escape or has remitted the punishment
by granting either pardon or amnesty’.
170
Denial of justice by outside interference
the perpetrators of crimes against foreigners. This type of denial of justice
has lapsed into relative desuétude.
In some cases this grievance is only part of the context of a broader
complaint which accuses the state of direct wrongdoing as well. Thus, in
the Don Pacifico episode, the acts for which the state was criticised were in
themselves constitutive of denial of justice (i.e. discrimination and
prejudice in a wilful cover-up). In modern cases, the failure to prosecute
private violence has been invoked in support of claims of expropriation,
by way of seeking to show complicity or manipulation.98 But claims based
on a failure to prosecute alone have become quite rare. In part this may be
because at one time they provided convenient excuses for powerful states
to engage in gunboat diplomacy against new states whose primary failure
was institutional underdevelopment. Such attitudes today tend to meet
acute resistance internationally. Another explanation may lie in the
observation that private claimants, who are more interested in material
remedies than in reparation for insult, find that their objectives are better
served by invoking the duty of ‘protection and security’ as articulated in
numerous treaties.’99
Anyone interested in the prosecution of allegations of denial of justice
in times past would find it rewarding to study the instances of relevant
state practice which arose in the 1890s when the US Government was
faced with a series of claims raised by Italy on behalf of families of a
number of its nationals lynched by mobs. The first episode occurred in
New Orleans, where vengeful rioters killed eleven Italian immigrants
charged with the murder of the chief of police, alleged to have been the
product of ‘machinations of a secret society called the Mafia’. Of the
eleven, five had not been tried, three had been acquitted and three were
facing a retrial. The Italian minister at Washington demanded that the
persons who attacked the jail be apprehended and punished, and reserved
the right of his government to seek other reparations. The secretary of
state communicated to the minister a copy of a telegraph to the governor
98
Amco Asia Corp. et al. v. Indonesia, 20 November 1984 and 5 June 1990, 1 ICSID Reports
377 (original proceedings: Foighel, Rubin, Goldman (presiding); resubmitted case:
Lalonde, Magid, Higgins (presiding)); Wena Hotels Ltd v. Egypt, 8 December 2000, 6
ICSID Reports 89 (Fadlallah, Wallace, Leigh (presiding)).
99
See, e.g., Asian Agricultural Products Ltd v. Sri Lanka, award, 27 June 1990, 4 ICSID Reports
245 (Goldman, Asante, El-Kosheri (presiding)); American Manufacturing & Trading, Inc.
v. Zaire, award, 21 February 1997, 5 ICSID Reports 11 (Golsong, Mbaye, Sucharitkul
(presiding)).
171
Denial of Justice in International Law
of Louisiana, in which it was said – in the ornate prose of the age – that the
President of the United States:
deeply regretted that the citizens of New Orleans should have so disparaged the
purity and adequacy of their own tribunals as to transfer to the passionate
judgment of a mob a question which should have been judged dispassionately
and by settled rules of law.100
These sonorous phrases were not followed by action satisfactory to Italy,
which withdrew its minister. Relations between the two countries were
not improved when a grand jury made a report which excused those who
participated in the attack on the jail; none was indicted. More than a year
later, in his State of the Union address to Congress in December 1892,
President Harrison expressed his government’s ‘reprobation and abhorrence’ of the lynching, and noted that an indemnity of 125,000 francs, or
US$24,330, had been paid, allowing the full restoration of diplomatic
relations.101
Similar lynchings of Italians in police custody took place in Colorado in
1895, in Louisiana in 1896 and again in 1899, and in Mississippi in 1890.
On these occasions, indemnities were proffered by the US Government
with greater speed. In his State of the Union address of 1899, President
McKinley referred to:
the public duty to take cognisance of matters affecting the life and rights of aliens
under the settled principles of international law no less than under treaty
stipulation.
He observed that in the case of the 1899 incident in Louisiana the
perpetrators had not been indicted by local authorities, a failure he
characterised as ‘a miscarriage’; lauded the Italian Government’s ‘most
temperate and just representations’; called for legislation to ‘confer upon
the Federal courts jurisdiction in this class of international cases where the
ultimate responsibility of the Federal Government may be involved’;
advised that ‘in accordance with precedent, Congress make gracious
provision for indemnity to the Italian sufferers’; and invited ‘the attention
of my countrymen to this reproach upon our civilization’.102
In a world facing the perils of terrorism and failed states, it may be asked
whether the delict of denial of justice may be invoked as a foundation for
100
J. B. Moore, A Digest of International Law (8 vols., Washington, DC: US Government
Printing Office, 1906), vol. VI, at p. 838, para. 1026.
101
Ibid. at pp. 840–841. 102 Ibid. at p. 848.
172
Denial of justice by outside interference
the international responsibility of states which do not pursue perpetrators of
terrorist crimes who find refuge within their borders. Although the traditional paradigm involves individuals as victims, there is no reason why a
state could not invoke denial of justice as a violation of international law.
Nevertheless two factors militate against claims by a state on this basis. The
first is that the objective of the complaining state is not apology or monetary
compensation, but rather extraterritorial police actions. The second is the
fact that the doctrine of denial of justice has for centuries focused on the
respondent state’s failure to police activity within its borders. The issues
raised in such a context would involve burning contemporary controversies
about the scope of justified self-defence, notably under the Charter of the
United Nations. This political debate would overwhelm any attempt to
view the matter through the doctrinal prism of denial of justice.
Wrongful measures of physical coercion
International tribunals have been quick to censure national authorities
who disregard due process in the administration of criminal justice.
A routine case, Stetson,103 presented before the US–Mexican commission
under the Treaty of 4 July 1868, involved a brig seized in 1858 by
authorities in Tampico, then under siege by General Garza. The master
was imprisoned. His release occurred only upon the arrival of a US manof-war. The commissioners had no difficulty holding that the local authorities should either have warned the brig away, or, if there was a bona fide
reason for capturing her, have instituted proper judicial proceedings.
A significant award was entered against the Mexican Government.
On the other hand, there is little sympathy for claimants who act in
ignorance of local laws. In the Selkirk case before the same commission,104
the Umpire, Francis Lieber, had little patience for the captain and owner
of a vessel who travelled upriver in the mistaken belief that he had been
authorised to do so. His papers, wrote Lieber, ‘were simply incongruous
with his presence in that river’. After the vessel had been libelled, the
‘proper court of law’ gave a decision within two months, stating as its
opinion that Selkirk was guilty of nothing more than ‘want of judgment’,
and levying a fine of 200 dollars and costs. Selkirk was told that he could
either appeal or pay. He did neither, but instead abandoned his vessel and
returned to the US, where he brought his complaint to the Department of
103
Stetson’s case (US v. Mexico), Moore, Arbitrations, at p. 3131.
173
104
Ibid. at p. 3130.
Denial of Justice in International Law
State seeking compensation for the loss of the vessel. Lieber was unsparing. Selkirk, he said, did not ‘seem to have taken any rational steps in the
matter’. His conclusion was this:
The umpire willingly adopts the view which the Mexican court seems to have
taken, and ascribes the irregular conduct of claimant to a serious want of
judgment, or his unfitness, in an intellectual point of view, for the part he had
assumed as captain or master of his own vessel in foreign ports where the Spanish
language is spoken; but neither equity nor justice permits us to allow his claim.
He might himself have easily avoided the difficulty.105
In principle, international law recognises the right of a state to organise
the enforcement of laws on its territory in such manner as it may reasonably choose. Aliens are bound to respect local law. They may suffer
inconvenience, such as detention for questioning, when the state acts to
prevent or punish crime.106 Their property may be subjected to conservatory measures ordered by a judge in connection with legal disputes.
Such often disagreeable exposure to the ordinary process of municipal
law must be tolerated without complaint unless mandatory principles of
international law have been neglected or specific requirements of treaties
have not been met.
Charges against an individual must be articulated by a competent
official and specify the legal basis of the accusation. Gross mistreatment
in connection with apprehension or detention violates international standards. An alien’s property may not be confiscated on mere assertions of
contraband or the like.
105
106
Ibid. at p. 3131.
The Bullis case, involving a US national convicted in Venezuela of the illegal
possession of arms, considered that: ‘Bullis was arrested, tried, and convicted in strict
accordance with the laws of Venezuela, to which he was at the time subject, and in
conformity with the usual procedure of its courts; that his trial was not unnecessarily
delayed; that he was provided with counsel; that he was allowed to communicate with
the representative of his Government; that there was no undue discrimination against
him as a citizen of the United States, nor was there, in his trial, any violation of those
rules for the maintenance of justice in judicial inquiries which are sanctioned by
international law. It does not appear that he was subjected to any unnecessarily harsh
or arbitrary treatment during his imprisonment. The respondent Government has
incurred no liability to this claimant. Every nation, whenever its laws are violated by
anyone owing obedience to them, whether he be a citizen or a stranger, has a right to
inflict the prescribed penalties upon the transgressor, if found within its jurisdiction;
provided always that the laws themselves, the methods of administering them, and
the penalties prescribed are not in derogation of civilized codes’; Henry C. Bullis
(US v. Venezuela), IX RIAA 231, at p. 232.
174
Denial of justice by outside interference
The standard for treatment of foreign prisoners is neither necessarily
that of their countries of origin nor that of the local carceral system.
A state cannot escape liability by pleading that it treats all prisoners equally,
whether national or foreign, or that it does not have the means to provide
humane custodial conditions (edible food, medical attention, rudimentary
sanitation and a modicum of respect for human dignity). The relevant test is
whether aliens are treated in conformity with universal standards. They
also prohibit unjustified delay in bringing a detained alien suspect to trial.
These minimum requirements are uncontroversial, and indeed would
doubtless be understood by decent people everywhere without the need
for learned consultations.
More controversial issues in the area of criminal law relate to the notion
of excessive bail and the opportunity to consult counsel. There have been
cases where disproportionate bail was deemed a denial of justice107; and
cases where reasonable periods of incommunicado were upheld.108
Acquittal, whether at first instance or appeal, does not in and of itself
open the gate to recovery for wrongful imprisonment if the proceedings
were based on probable cause and were conducted in accordance with
established procedures (which themselves satisfy minimum international
standards, and in particular are not corrupted by malice or arbitrariness).
The same principle applies, with the same qualifications, if an alien is
released prior to trial. In Freeman’s memorable phase:
‘Protection’ does not imply that a foreign citizen must be elevated to a pedestal of
privileges above the law and treated as a juridical enfant gâté.109
107
E.g. Chattin case (US v. Mexico), 23 July 1927, IV RIAA 282; Jones’s case (US v. Spain),
Moore, Arbitrations, at p. 3253.
108
E.g. Kaiser case (US v. Mexico), Claims Commission, United States and Mexico,
Opinions of Commissioners, Washington 1929, at p. 80.
109
Freeman at p. 212. (Enfant gâté means ‘spoiled child’.)
175
7
Denial of justice by the decision-maker
Refusal to judge
It may appear odd that a national court ill disposed towards a foreigner
would refuse to decide. Why would an antagonistic judge not rather
render an unfavourable judgment or order?
The answer may be that the adverse judgment is difficult to justify,
and – most of all – open to appeals before higher jurisdictions less likely
to protect parochial interests. Such a chauvinistic impulse may explain
the fate that befell the engineering firm Revpower Limited in 1993 when
it sought to enforce an award rendered in Shanghai against a Chinese
state-owned enterprise based in that city (the Shanghai Far-East AeroTechnology Import and Export Corporation).1 Its application for enforcement was filed with all requisite supporting documents in the
Intermediate People’s Court. Since China was bound by the New
York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign
Arbitral Awards, a decree of enforcement should in principle have
been forthcoming. Instead, the assigned judge simply refused to put
the case on the docket. If Revpower had had access to an international
forum, it could plainly have held the central government internationally
responsible for the denial of justice.
As one might expect, a malingering court is likely to make some show of
activity. The international tribunal then faces the challenge of determining
whether there was in fact a disguised refusal to deal with the case. The
1
See Jan Paulsson and Alastair Crawford, ‘1994 Revision of CIETAC Rules Promises
Increased Neutrality in Arbitration in China’, (1994) 9(6) Mealey’s International Arbitration
Report 17, at pp. 18–19.
176
Denial of justice by the decision-maker
leading precedent is perhaps the Fabiani case,2 decided in 1896 by the
President of the Swiss Confederation, acting by special authority as sole
arbitrator under the Franco-Venezuelan treaty of 1864. Fabiani had secured
a private arbitral award in his favour in France in 1880. It had been duly
granted exequatur by the competent court in that country. He presented the
award for enforcement in Venezuela, only to be met with a long series of
meretricious suspensions and interlocutory appeals, culminating in the
refusal of a tribunal d’exception, especially selected to deal with his case, even
to schedule a meeting. Fabiani, who had been bankrupted in the meanwhile,
made a substantial recovery on account of the denial of justice.3
Delay
Freeman devoted an entire chapter to the topic of ‘Unreasonable Delay in
Administering Justice’.4 In the Fabiani case referred to in the preceding
section, the sole arbitrator (President Lachenal) wrote as follows:
Upon examining the general principles of international law with regard to denial
of justice, that is to say, the rules common to most bodies of law or laid down by
doctrine, one finds that denial of justice includes not only the refusal of a judicial
authority to exercise his functions and, in particular, to give a decision on the
request submitted to him, but also wrongful delays on his part in giving judgment.5
Freeman stated that ‘ever since the era of private reprisals it has been
axiomatic that unreasonable delays are properly to be assimilated to
absolute denials of access . . . attempts to deny that continuous unwarranted postponements of judicial action violate international law are now
of the rarest occurrence’.6 As he noted, delays may be ‘even more ruinous’
than absolute refusal of access, because in the latter situation the claimant
knows where he stands and take action accordingly, whether by seeking
diplomatic intervention or exploring avenues of direct legal action.
What constitutes ‘unreasonable delay’ depends on a number of factors.
Perhaps the most important feature in criminal proceedings is whether
the claimant was imprisoned awaiting trial. Chattin7 was kept in detention
for some five months while unsuccessfully appealing to the court. The
2
No. 1 (France v. Venezuela), Moore, Arbitrations, at p. 4878. 3 Ibid. at pp. 4884 and 4902.
Freeman, chap. X, at pp. 242–263.
5
Antoine Fabiani (no. 1) (France v. Venezuela), Moore, Arbitrations, 4878, at p. 4895; the
translation from the French appears in Freeman at p. 242.
6
Freeman at pp. 242–243 (notes omitted).
7
US v. Mexico, 23 July 1927, IV RIAA 282.
4
177
Denial of Justice in International Law
presiding commissioner observed that whereas Chattin’s appeal from his
decree of imprisonment was formulated on 11 July 1910, it was not
remitted to the appellate court until 12 September 1910.
In civil cases, defendant states have sought to excuse delays by reference
to overcharged dockets. Such arguments have not met with success; as the
Anglo-Mexican Claims Commission put it in the El Oro Mining and Railway
Co. case, refusing to countenance a failure by the relevant Mexican authority
to render a decision within some nine years:
the amount of work incumbent on the Court, and the multitude of lawsuits with
which they are confronted, may explain, but not excuse the delay. If this number
is so enormous as to occasion an arrear of nine years, the conclusion cannot be
other than that the judicial machinery is defective.8
The French Conseil d’Etat, the highest court in administrative matters,
has held that the State is liable by virtue of Articles 6(1) and 13 of the
European Convention on Human Rights for its failure to ensure, as a part
of its obligation to respect the rights of a procès equitable, that judgments are
rendered within a reasonable period of time. For example, in a decision
rendered in 2002,9 the Conseil d’Etat found such liability where the
administrative tribunal of Versailles took seven and a half years to rule
on a ‘request which did not present any particular difficulty’. To determine whether the duration was reasonable, the Conseil d’Etat emphasised the need to evaluate the matter concretely and in its entirety, taking
into account its degree of complexity, the conduct of the parties in the
course of the proceedings, as well as any known facts pointing to a
legitimate interest in celerity. (In that case, the claimant was a public
works contractor aged 72 at the date of his petition.)
Depending on the circumstances, French courts have sanctioned judges for
setting over-lengthy intermediate deadlines, such as one and a half years for
the defendant’s written pleadings in a civil case, ten months for the constitution of a labour tribunal, or forty months for an appeal from such a tribunal.10
Illegitimate assertion of jurisdiction
This is a natural complement to tampering of the judiciary by the executive or legislative branches. (See the section on ‘Manipulation of the
8
Quoted in Freeman at p. 259.
Conseil d’Etat, Garde des sceaux, Ministre de la justice/M. Magiera, 28 June 2002.
10
Loı̈c Cadiet, Droit judiciaire privé (3rd edn., Litec, Paris, 2000).
9
178
Denial of justice by the decision-maker
composition of courts’ in Chapter 6.) The government stacks the courts
in its favour, or selects compliant judges to sit on special tribunals. If
the tactic is to work, the manipulated court must go along with it. In
such circumstance, its assertion of jurisdiction will be internationally
illicit.
In the Idler case, the Venezuelan Government had filled vacancies on
the Supreme Court in an unlawful manner. Idler was summoned by
letters rogatory to appear before that court. He failed to do so. The
Supreme Court decided that the matter in fact should be heard by a
lower-level court, and sent the case to be decided there. This occurred
without notice to Idler. A judgment unfavourable to him was handed
down, and approved by the Supreme Court. The commission reasoned
that if the facts necessary to give a court jurisdiction do not exist, ‘the
record will be a nullity in the eyes of a controlling authority’, and
continued as follows:
The fact that the supreme court of its own motion sent the record down to the
superior court does not help the matter, for it is immaterial whether the suit was
begun there at its instance or not. The question is when and whether it was therein
instituted.
The objection to this record is by no means technical. No notice, legal or
other, was received or sent to Jacob Idler about the suit in the superior court, the
only court having jurisdiction to entertain it in the first instance (unless it be the
treasury court, where it never was), as is conceded on all hands. The letters
rogatory directed him to appear in the supreme court in a suit instituted there. If the
summons was legal it only gave him notice of what that court in that case – not in
another instituted in an inferior tribunal and subsequently appealed to it – might
lawfully adjudge. The notice directing him, away in a distant land, to appear in
one court when the business affecting his interests was to be done in another, was
worse than none at all, for it was misleading. Even if no notice had been required,
and one had nevertheless been given, whose tendency was thus to mislead, we
are inclined to think the act, from the standpoint of justice, would vitiate the
whole proceedings. Receiving the notice in 1837, at Philadelphia, that a suit had
been begun against him in restitutio in the supreme court of Venezuela in June
1836, he – charged at most with a knowledge of the law as it was declared to be –
could well have said to himself, ‘I shall not undertake the hazards of a journey or
incur the expense to appear. The court has no jurisdiction and can not grant the
prayer of the government, and it is now too late to bring the suit in the court
which had jurisdiction.’11
11
Jacob Idler v. Venezuela, Moore, Arbitrations 3491, at pp. 3514–3515.
179
Denial of Justice in International Law
Fundamental breaches of due process
This is the heart of the matter. What may seem intolerably warped to one
lawyer may strike another, depending on cultural differences, as an
innocent error at most. Any international censure of national court
proceedings may therefore incur the criticism that the international
adjudicators are substituting their judgment about matters as to which
reasonable persons can disagree, and which therefore should not be
subject to review.
In the Chattin case decided by the Mexican–US Commission in 1927,
for example, the Presiding Commissioner (Cornelis Van Vollenhoven, an
estimable Dutch international lawyer of his time) wrote this:
Irregularity of court proceedings is proven with reference to absence of proper
investigations, insufficiency of confrontations, withholding from the accused the
opportunity to know all of the charges brought against him, undue delay of the
proceedings, making the hearings in open court a mere formality, and a continued absence of seriousness on the part of the Court.12
There was much in this with which Fernandez MacGregor, the
Mexican Commissioner, could agree:
To prevent an accused from defending himself, either by refusing to inform
him as to the facts imputed to him or by denying him a hearing and the use of
remedies; to sentence him without evidence, or to impose on him disproportionate or unusual penalties, to treat him with cruelty and discrimination; are
all acts which per se cause damage due to their rendering a just decision
impossible.13
Yet this passage comes from a fervent dissent, in which the following
sentences read as follows:
But to delay the proceedings somewhat, to lay aside some evidence, there
existing other clear proofs, to fail to comply with the adjective law in its
secondary provisions and other deficiencies of this kind, do not cause damage
nor violate international law. Counsel for Mexico justly stated that to submit
the decisions of a nation to revision in this respect was tantamount to
submitting her to a regime of capitulations. All the criticism which has
been made of these proceedings, I regret to say, appears to arise from a
lack of knowledge of the judicial system and practice of Mexico, and, what is
12
US v. Mexico, 23 July 1927, IV RIAA 282, at p. 295.
180
13
Ibid. at p. 312.
Denial of justice by the decision-maker
more dangerous, from the application thereto of tests belonging to foreign
systems of law.14
Chattin was an American employee of a Mexican railroad company
who, along with others, had been convicted of embezzlement (a ticket scam)
and imprisoned. The majority of the commissioners concluded that there
had been ‘a most astonishing lack of seriousness on the part of the Court’.
They delved far into the details of the record to criticise the lack of diligence
in fact-finding. Moreover, they noted with disapproval the absence of ‘any
such thing as an oral examination or cross-examination’ – an observation
which was bound to trigger Fernandez MacGregor’s disapproval given the
differences in national practice as to the importance of oral hearings. What
most profoundly disturbed the majority was clearly the weight given by
the court to anonymous written accusations submitted by the railroad
company, and the doubt that subsisted as to whether they were even
seen by Chattin’s lawyer before judgment.
Fernandez MacGregor responded that he did not believe that the
accused had been ignorant of any charges or evidence, ‘for the simple
reason that the records found in a criminal process are not secret,
according to Mexican law’. Nor did the Mexican Constitution require
that an accused be confronted with every witness. His review of the record
led him to the conclusion that the convicting judge had not relied on the
secret information; in any event, the facts had been established by cumulative means. Finally, he rejected any criticism of the duration of the ‘trial
proper’ as having ‘lasted five minutes at the most’ on the grounds that
such criticism ignores the basic criminal process in a system, like
Mexico’s, where all evidence tends to be adduced in preliminary phases
of investigation, during which all rights should be observed, with the result
that the parties frequently have nothing to add on the occasion of the
final public hearing.
14
Ibid. This debate may be compared to the way the arbitrators dealt with one of the
aspects of the Mondev case, where the claimant argued that a particular matter should
have been remanded to a civil jury as the proper trier of fact. The arbitral tribunal
disagreed, in these terms:
‘Questions of fact-finding on appeal are quintessentially matters of local procedural practice.
Except in extreme cases, the Tribunal does not understand how the application of local
procedural rules about such matters as remand, or decisions as to the functions of juries vis-à-vis
appellate courts, could violate the standards embodied in Article 1105(1). On the approach
adopted by Mondev, NAFTA tribunals would turn into courts of appeal, which is not their role.’
Mondev at para. 136.
181
Denial of Justice in International Law
This dissent appears consonant with the views expressed by the US
government in diplomatic instructions in 1855, which observed that while
the practice in Austria of holding defendants incommunicado ‘is certainly
revolting to our notions of justice and humane treatment’, it was not
‘peculiar to that government’ and would not be the subject of international complaints by the US. The US Government’s analysis was as
follows:
The system of proceeding in criminal cases in the Austrian government, has,
undoubtedly, as is the case in most other absolute countries, many harsh features
and is deficient in many safeguards which our laws provide for the security of the
accused; but it is not within the competence of one independent power to reform
the jurisdiction of others, nor has it the right to regard as an injury the application
of the judicial system and established modes of proceedings in foreign countries
to its citizens when fairly brought under their operation. All we can ask of
Austria, and this we can demand as a right, is that, in her proceedings against
American citizens prosecuted for offences committed within her jurisdiction, she
should give them the full and fair benefit of her system, such as it is, and deal with
them as she does with her own subjects or those of other foreign powers. She can
not be asked to modify her mode of proceedings to suit our views, or to extend to
our citizens all the advantages which her subjects would have under our better
and more humane system of criminal jurisprudence.15
Fortunately, substantial international consensus has emerged today
with respect to a number of fundamental matters, in a manner which
would sharply reduce the tolerance of ‘national peculiarities’ reflected in
this instruction. This consensus owes much to recent jurisprudence, not
only in the area of human rights but also in that of international arbitrations of both a public and private law nature where assessments of the
finality of arbitral awards by an impressive multitude of international and
national jurisdictions have found much common ground. But a great deal
of that consensus has existed for a long time.
The three international arbitrators who rendered the Loewen award in
2003 were all eminent retired common law judges. The words they used
to describe the treatment of the Canadian investor at the hands of
American courts included these: ‘a disgrace’, ‘the antithesis of due process’, and ‘a miscarriage of justice’. How they reached those conclusions is
a matter of great interest.
15
Instructions of Secretary of State Marcy to his chargé at Vienna, 6 April 1855,
J. B. Moore, A Digest of International Law (8 vols., Washington, DC: US Government
Printing Office, 1906), vol. VI, at p. 275.
182
Denial of justice by the decision-maker
Any consideration of Loewen must however begin with the observation
that the award upheld a motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction. That
motion, raised after the oral hearing on the merits, succeeded on the
grounds that the claims had been assigned to an entity owned and
controlled by a United States corporation. This, the arbitrators held,
defeated a NAFTA requirement of diversity of nationality as between
claimants and the relevant respondent state. In other words, the arbitral
tribunal did not have jurisdiction to decide the case on the merits.
Everything the arbitrators had to say on the subject of denial of justice
is therefore obiter dictum. As for the continuous-nationality issue, they
decided it on the basis that it was not explicitly dealt with in NAFTA
and thus fell under general principles of ‘customary international law’.
These, the arbitrators felt, should lead to the conclusion that the claimant
must maintain the relevant nationality until the date of the award –
‘through the date of the resolution of the claim’, as the tribunal put
it.16 There is nothing in the award to indicate that the arbitrators had
considered the special addendum on ‘continuous nationality and the
transferability of claims’ prepared by the ILC’s rapporteur on diplomatic
protection, Professor Dugard, in early 2000.17 They wrote only that
Loewen had contended such a report had been issued, and had encountered
some criticism. But anyone who reads the Report would see that Dugard’s
extensive review of the authorities led him to conclude that there was no
established rule in this area. The dies ad quem requirement which commended itself to the Loewen arbitrators was perhaps the least plausible of a
long series of alternative candidates.18
16
Loewen, 26 June 2003, at para. 225.
International Law Commission (Dugard), First Report on Diplomatic Protection, UN
Doc. A/CN.4/506/Add. 1 (2000).
18
Ibid. at p. 11, para. 16. These included: (i) the date on which a government endorses the
claim of a national; (ii) the date of initial diplomatic negotiations; (iii) the date of filing
the claim; (iv) the date of signature of the treaty referring to the relevant forum; (v) the
date of ratification of said treaty; (vi) the date of its entry into force; (vii) the date of
presentation of the claim (accord, Guy I. F. Leigh, ‘Nationality and Diplomatic
Protection’, (1971) 20 International and Comparative Law Quarterly 453, at p. 475);
(viii) the date of conclusion of the oral hearings; (ix) the date of judgment (i.e. the
Loewen solution); and (x) the most extreme, the date of settlement.
Without any indication of being aware of it, the Loewen arbitrators adopted the
reasoning in the case of Minnie Stevens Eschauzier (Great Britain v. US), 24 June 1931,
V RIAA 207, whose claim was rejected because she lost her British nationality by
marriage to an American between the date of the conclusion of the oral hearing
and the judgment. As the Umpire (Edwin P. Parker) noted in the far more
influential Administrative Decision No. V (US v. Germany), 31 October 1924, VII
RIAA 119: (A) the acquisition of nationality transfers allegiance but does not
17
183
Denial of Justice in International Law
The reasons given by a tribunal when it explains why it decides to
devote itself to expositions unnecessary to the task at hand never fail to
engage the attentive reader’s curiosity. In this case, we are left to muse
about the universe of hidden meaning which might lie behind the innocentsounding preposition ‘as’. That little word is used twice in a remarkable
sentence, undoubtedly drafted with particular care since it appears in the
second paragraph of the award:
As our consideration of the merits of the case was well advanced when
Respondent filed this motion to dismiss and as we reached the conclusion that
transport existing state obligations and, (B) at any rate, most of the decisions
depend on the lex specialis of the relevant treaty and therefore do not reflect a
general principle; ‘it may well be doubted whether the alleged rule [of continuous
nationality] has received such universal recognition as to justify the broad statement that it is an established rule of international law’, Ibid. at p. 140.
In the end, Professor Dugard recommended that the ILC ‘reject the doctrine of
continuous nationality as a substantive rule of customary international law’. ILC,
First Report on Diplomatic Protection, Addendum 1 at p.14, para. 21. Accord, D.
P. O’Connell, International Law (2nd edn, London: Stevens & Sons, 1970), at
pp. 1035–1036. And if one were seeking to give a purposive interpretation to
the lex specialis, i.e. NAFTA, it would seem appropriate to give weight to the
objective of stimulating the mobilisation of financial resources to be employed in
cross-border investment. That indeed happened. A Canadian corporate entity,
Loewen Inc., invested in the US. Notions of estoppel would seem to preclude
subsequent denial of the treaty protections attached to that investment. The
international wrong caused to the investment occurred at a time when the
corporate entity enjoyed Canadian nationality, and so, under this view, its
entitlement was vested. Why should it matter that due to the scheduling vagaries
of international litigation the award came to be rendered at a time when the
holder of that entitlement had a different nationality?
To be complete, there was another aspect of the critical nationality issue, namely the
fact that before being reorganised as a US corporation, The Loewen Group, Inc., had
assigned its rights to the NAFTA claim to a newly incorporated Canadian entity called
Nafcanco (which the tribunal described as ‘a play on the words NAFTA and Canada’;
Loewen, 26 June 2003, at para. 220). Under Barcelona Traction, this might have been
enough to preserve the corporate claimant’s distinct nationality. At least one would have
expected an in-depth discussion of the matter. The award, however, contained only the
two following dismissive sentences:
‘All of the benefits of any award would clearly inure to the American corporation. Such a naked
entity as Nafcanco, even with its catchy name, cannot qualify as a continuing national for the
purposes of this proceeding’ (ibid. at para. 237).
This affirmation is impossible to square with other, more carefully articulated decisions
in the field of investment arbitration; see, e.g., CME Czech Republic BV v. Czech Republic,
partial award, 13 September 2001, 9 ICSID Reports [forthcoming] (Schwebel, Hándl, Kühn
(presiding)). Drafters of bilateral investment treaties wishing to require more than what the
Loewen arbitrators called a ‘naked entity’ articulate explicit requirements to that effect, e.g. that
a substantial presence or principal headquarters is located in the country of incorporation.
184
Denial of justice by the decision-maker
Claimants’ NAFTA claims should be dismissed on the merits, we include in this
Award our reasons for this conclusion.
There it is, and that is all; what is obvious is that the arbitrators felt
moved to make a statement, but how they thought this passage legitimised
a thousand words obiter dictum remains obscure.
In other circumstances, with other tribunals, one might treat such
explanations with indifference, or indeed criticise them as jurisprudentially unwise, for reasons suggested in the following comments made
before the final award in Loewen was handed down by one of the lawyers
who represented the US Government in that case:
Arbitrators in cases under investment treaties have recently demonstrated
an increasing awareness that the public law nature of these cases demands
a different approach than that called for in private commercial arbitrations.
Certain tribunals have demonstrated a pronounced sensitivity to the importance of the issues they have been asked to decide, for example, by limiting
their discussion of the issues raised by the parties to those necessary to the
decision made, rather than follow the approach, not unusual in private
arbitrations, of addressing every argument made by the parties, even if the
ultimate grounds for the decision make such a discussion unnecessary and
hypothetical.19
But such reservations must give way to the truly exceptional circumstances of the Loewen case.
First, the notoriety of this case in the field of investment arbitration
cannot be overestimated; quite simply, few – if any – other international
awards have been more intently anticipated. It was a case about which
lawyers around the world, no matter how personally uninvolved in the
proceedings, had passionate feelings. A purely technical dismissal on
jurisdictional grounds would have been an unbearable let-down; obiter
or not, the arbitrators must have felt a compelling demand to say something
about the merits.
Secondly, each of the three arbitrators had reached the heights of the
judiciary of their countries; for two of them, the absolute heights. As
eminent national judges, they brought a noteworthy perspective to their
task, when empanelled as international arbitrators, of sitting in judgment
over the conduct of the national judiciary of one of their countries. The
arbitrator whose country’s responsibility was in question, Abner Mikva,
19
B. Legum, ‘Trends and Challenges in Investor-State Arbitration’, (2003) 19 Arbitration
International 143, at p. 147.
185
Denial of Justice in International Law
had experience not only as a judge on the District of Columbia Court of
Appeals, but also as an elected member of the US House of
Representatives and a White House counsel. This was, in other words,
not an international tribunal likely to trample heedlessly on the prerogatives of national judges.
Thirdly, this was not a battleground for those who still labour in the
desiccated vineyards of ideology and rush to consider awards in terms of
global polarities. This was not a North–South conflict, but a claim
brought by an investor of a capital exporting country against another
capital exporting state. The interests were those of two rich neighbouring
countries with functionally fused economies and similar cultures of liberal
capitalism.
So what this tribunal had to say about denial of justice is bound to be
studied for generations to come. As we have seen, the claim would,
according to the tribunal, have failed even on the merits because the
aggrieved investor had the burden to demonstrate that it had ‘no reasonably available and adequate remedy’ under municipal law, and failed to
discharge that burden. So when the arbitrators unhesitatingly observed
that the investor had been treated appallingly by American courts, in a
manner violative of international law, we are dealing with an obiter dictum
in the second degree.
In a nutshell, the Canadian investor lost a commercial dispute before
the courts of Mississippi against a local competitor, the O’Keefe family, in
circumstances redolent of the worst excesses of the US legal system. The
commercial dispute involved less than US$10 million, but a judgment was
handed down by a jury in an amount of US$500 million, of which
US$400 million were punitive damages and US$75 million were on
account of ‘emotional distress’. The claim was prosecuted before an
elected judge by a lawyer operating on a contingency-fee basis,20 who
sought, unchecked by the judge, to appeal to the jurors’ parochialism and
racial prejudice.
The heart of the ‘disgraceful’ conduct of the trial was that the judge:
failed in his duty to take control of the trial by permitting the jury to be exposed to
persistent and flagrant appeals to prejudice on the part of O’Keefe’s counsel and
20
The remarkable career of Willie Edward Gary as a flamboyant plaintiff’s lawyer, and
his involvement with the O’Keefes, is recounted at length in Jonathan Harr, ‘The
Burial’, The New Yorker, 1 November 1999, 70. (Harr is the author of A Civil Action
(New York: Vintage, 1996), the best-selling non-fiction book turned into a motion
picture featuring John Travolta.)
186
Denial of justice by the decision-maker
witnesses. Respondent is responsible for any failure on the part of the trial judge
in failing to take control of the trial so as to ensure that it was fairly conducted in
this respect.21
The facts that gave rise to that conclusion will be considered in the
immediately following section on ‘Discrimination or prejudice’.
Some aspects of the case, however, merit attention in connection with
the more general topic of fundamental procedural defects.
First, the arbitral tribunal criticised the trial judge for refusing ‘to give an
instruction to the jury stating clearly that discrimination on the grounds of
nationality, race, and class was impermissible’. Loewen requested that his
instruction include an exhortation to the effect that all persons ‘are equal in
the eyes of the law without regard to race, ethnicity, national origin, wealth
or social status’ and that the foreign parties were ‘entitled to the same fair
trial’ as the O’Keefes. The judge refused, and instead contented himself by
reading a standard one-sentence instruction, given in every case, which
refers to bias in general, but is explicit about neither nationality nor race:
You should not be influenced by bias, sympathy or prejudice.22
This, the arbitrators concluded, was ‘inadequate to counter the prejudice
created by the way in which O’Keefe’s case had been presented’23:
There was a gross failure on the part of the trial judge to afford the due process
due to Loewen in protecting it from the tactics employed by O’Keefe and its
counsel.24
In other words, when the injustice in a case is initiated by a litigant for
whose behaviour the state is not responsible, the court is nevertheless held
to a duty to remedy the unfairness – and failure to fulfil that duty is
imputable to the state.
Secondly, the arbitral tribunal was unimpressed by the US
Government’s argument to the effect that since it is responsible for only
the conduct of its courts, and not for that of litigants, the claim should fail
because Loewen did not raise objections with the judge. In this respect the
arbitrators obviously drew on their considerable collective experience.
They acknowledged that there had been occasions in the trial when objections or requests to strike irrelevant and prejudicial evidence could have
been made, but were not.
21
24
Loewen, 26 June 2003, at para. 53.
Ibid. at para. 87.
22
Ibid. at para. 82.
187
23
Ibid. at para. 85.
Denial of Justice in International Law
In a jury trial, however, counsel are naturally reluctant to create the impression, by
continuously objecting, that they are seeking to suppress relevant evidence or that
they are relying on technicalities. So it is not to be expected that Loewen’s counsel
would object on every occasion when objectionable comment was made or
inadmissible evidence was given. The question is whether Loewen’s counsel
sufficiently brought their objections to the attention of the trial judge and whether
the trial judge was aware of the problem and should have taken action himself.25
...
It may well be that the trial judge’s unfavourable, dismissive, abrupt responses
to their objections during the voir dire, reinforced by similar responses during the
trial, led them to make the judgment that objections would be rejected and would
result in prejudice to Loewen in the eyes of the jury.26
Overall, they concluded:
Having regard to the history of the trial, and the way in which it was conducted
by Judge Graves, we do not consider that failures to object on the part of
Loewen’s counsel amounted to a waiver of the grounds on which Claimants
now contend that the conduct of the trial constituted a violation of NAFTA.27
Thirdly, the judge rather obviously mishandled the requirement under
Mississippi law that trials must be procedurally bifurcated with respect to
claims of punitive damages; liability and compensatory damages are to be
considered first, before any evidence and arguments are presented with
respect to punitive damages. O’Keefe referred to punitive damages during the course of the trial; Loewen objected, but the judge gave no
instruction to the jury in that respect. A verdict was returned for
US$100 million in compensatory damages and US$160 million in punitive damages. After denying a motion by Loewen for a mistrial without
discussion, the judge informed the jury that he did not accept the award of
punitive damages. As the arbitral tribunal put it:
The jury may well have interpreted the rejection of this award as an indication
that it was inadequate.28
25
28
Ibid. at para. 73. 26 Ibid. at para. 75. 27 Ibid. at para. 87.
Ibid. at para. 96. An alternative explanation, more to the judge’s credit, appears in
Harr’s account in The New Yorker: the judge was minded to let the verdict stand without
going on to a separate consideration of punitive damages, but it was Loewen’s legal
team which insisted on doing so during a meeting in his chambers. This inevitably
meant that evidence would be adduced regarding Loewen’s net worth. The judge was
astonished. ‘I don’t think you want to go back in there’, he is quoted as having said.
‘You already know they’ve given a hundred and sixty million dollars without knowing
net worth.’ Harr, ‘The Burial’ at p. 92.
188
Denial of justice by the decision-maker
At any rate, the jury was brought back to consider the amount of punitive
damages. When presenting arguments on this point, O’Keefe’s lawyer now
asserted that Loewen would make ‘over $7.9 billion’ from its contract with
the National Baptist Convention, a religious group including numerous
African Americans, and that this profit would be made from ‘just selling
vaults’ because black people would not be admitted to Loewen funeral
homes for burial. Neither assertion was supported by evidence.
Ultimately the jury’s final verdict included US$400 million in punitive
damages, making the total of US$500 million – ‘by far the largest
[damages] ever awarded in Mississippi’.29 The arbitrators concluded that
Loewen had ‘a very strong case . . . that the amounts were so inflated as to
invite the inference that the jury was swayed by prejudice, passion or
sympathy’.30 The first verdict showed that the jurors were prepared to
award punitive damages with neither instructions nor evidence to that
effect. Their initial award included compensatory damages on account of
elements (oppression and fraud) not requested in counsel’s closing address,
as well as US$78 million on account of breach of a contract which one
of O’Keefe’s own witnesses had valued at only US$980,000. There had
been no expert evidence of emotional distress, but merely O’Keefe’s selfdescribed ‘sleepless nights, worry and stress’. The damages awarded included
‘lost future revenue’ whereas Mississippi law – like the law everywhere –
allows only ‘lost future profits’. Damages were allowed under both
a settlement agreement and the contract which that agreement had
purported to extinguish, an obvious duplication of recovery.
Fourthly, the arbitral tribunal rejected the objection that Loewen’s own
flawed trial strategy was the cause of the verdict. The US Government
submitted an expert opinion to the effect that the trial had been affected
by serious errors. The arbitrators agreed that with hindsight Loewen’s
counsel made a number of ‘unwise’ decisions. Moreover, four former
Loewen witnesses gave evidence critical of Loewen’s business practices.
One of them testified that Loewen put into practice a policy of ‘constant
and aggressive price increases’; and gave O’Keefe in particular misleading information in ‘evident breach of contract’. Finally, Loewen’s conduct
during the trial itself was unappealing: unfavourable evidence was
29
Harr, ‘The Burial’ at p. 92, reports that several jurors revealed that with only one more
vote they would have awarded one billion dollars. The largest previous verdict in
Mississippi had, according to The New Yorker, been in the amount of $18 million. The
Wall Street Journal’s editorial page featured the headline: ‘A Small Canadian Firm
Meets the American Tort Monster’, ibid. at p. 95.
30
Loewen, 26 June 2003, at para. 105.
189
Denial of Justice in International Law
produced belatedly, and thus highlighted; Loewen’s counsel had not
complied with court orders with respect to the sequestration of a witness,
with the result that his testimony was struck; Raymond Loewen suffered
from ‘frequent claims of memory failure’; and Loewen produced contradictory evidence about its net worth.
While accepting that these matters strengthened O’Keefe’s case, the
arbitral tribunal concluded that they ‘do not erase the prejudicial conduct
at trial . . . or eliminate the influence it was calculated to have on the jury’.31
The arbitral tribunal noted that no legal system expects to produce
‘perfect trials’. Mistakes, errors and prejudice will occur from time to
time. Each system has its own methods for correcting such missteps, but
not every one of them is remedied; each system has its own way of
defining criteria that allow ‘the results of less than perfect trials’ to
stand. In the US, often-applied criteria include the doctrines of ‘harmless
error’, ‘invited error’, and the waiver of objection.
The US Government argued that such appellate doctrines precluded the
international arbitral tribunal from basing its decision ‘on specific flaws that
were the most egregious’. The arbitrators disagreed, stating as follows:
We need not resolve the domestic procedural disputes which arose at the trial
such as the question whether Loewen was entitled to the particular instruction
which it sought as to bias. The question is whether the whole trial, and its
resultant verdict, satisfied minimum standards of international law, or the ‘fair
and equitable treatment and full protection and security’ that the Contracting
States pledged in Article 1105 of NAFTA.32
Taking the ‘excessiveness of the verdict’ as ‘one instance of many . . . methods
employed by the jury and countenanced by the judge [that] were
the antithesis of due process’,33 the arbitrators defined ‘unfair and
inequitable treatment or denial of justice amounting to a breach of
international justice’ as:
[m]anifest injustice in the sense of a lack of due process leading to an outcome
which offends a sense of judicial propriety34
and concluded that:
the whole trial and its resultant verdict were clearly improper and discreditable
and cannot be squared with minimum standards of international law and fair
and equitable treatment.35
31
34
Ibid. at para. 118.
Ibid. at para. 132.
32
35
Ibid. at para. 121.
Ibid. at para. 137.
190
33
Ibid. at para. 122.
Denial of justice by the decision-maker
The Loewen award was not enthusiastically received in all quarters. To
the contrary, it gave rise to a torrent of unrestrained criticism, excoriating
the arbitrators for cowardice and lack of realism. Although far from the
most acerbic, a well-known Swiss arbitrator wrote an article expressing
the views that the arbitrators’ reasons ‘defy the imagination’, that it is a
‘riddle how a distinguished Arbitral Tribunal could base its decision on
such implausible grounds’, that the arbitrators ‘pompously asserted’ that
they were rescuing NAFTA from a threat to its very viability, that in thus
taking upon themselves the exclusive responsibility of the governments of
the concerned countries they ‘blinked and shrank’ from applying
‘NAFTA provisions designed to redress exactly such abuses’, and that
they thus made the kind of ‘bad law’ which ‘breeds disrespect and
contempt among the politicians and public at large for the whole investors’ protection system, weakening it rather than strengthening it’.36
But is it fair to conclude that Loewen was decided by timorous, unctuous
arbitrators anxious to assist the powerful wrongdoer? Were they like
Hemingway, who, F. Scott Fitzgerald is said to have said, was always
willing to lend a helping hand to the one above him? Before answering
yes, the arbitrators’ critics should consider:
(A) that the shocking description of the miscarriage of justice that took
place in Mississippi which has impressed itself on the minds of most
observers is in fact none other than the description given by the
arbitrators themselves, at length and in the strongest terms – an
‘outrage’, and
(B) it would have been easy for the arbitrators, as a matter of reasoning
and drafting, to whitewash the defendant government by minimising the grievance, and demonstrating that the elements of the delict
of denial of justice were not satisfied, for example by giving weight to
the US Government’s factually accurate observation that the claimants had not availed themselves of numerous opportunities to
object, or to emphasise several ‘unwise decisions’ made by
Loewen’s litigating team. There is international jurisprudence to
the effect that the failure to use forensic weapons at one’s disposal,
such as, in the Ambatielos case,37 not calling a key witness, will
disqualify subsequent recourse to international justice.
36
Jacques Werner, ‘Making Investment Protection More Certain: A Modest Proposal’,
(2003) 4 Journal of World Investment 767, at p. 777.
37
Greece v. UK, 6 March 1956, XII RIAA 83.
191
Denial of Justice in International Law
A good case can be made for the proposition that the Loewen award
advances rather than damages the cause of the rule of international law.
Faced with future claims of denial of justice, international adjudicators,
assuming that they have jurisdiction and that the claim is ripe, will find
valuable guidance in the collective analysis of these three highly experienced judges as they uncompromisingly evaluated the complex record of
this controversial case.
Discrimination or prejudice
As the Loewen tribunal observed, international law attaches ‘special
importance to discriminatory violations of municipal law’, so that:
A decision which is in breach of municipal law and is discriminatory against
the foreign litigant amounts to manifest injustice according to international law.38
This does not, of course, mean that a discriminatory judgment is
internationally inviolable if it is not in breach of municipal law. In such
a case, the breach of international law is legislative. If the law is not
discriminatory, and a discriminatory judgment issues which violates the
law, then there has been a judicial breach of international law which need
not be referred to as denial of justice. Thus, the Loewen tribunal spoke of
‘manifest injustice’; it would be simpler to say ‘breach’.
If there is proof of actual bias, there is obviously prejudice. But there
may be unfairness sufficient to violate international law even in the
absence of evidence of actual bias.
In a separate chapter of its award,39 the Loewen tribunal concluded that
there was no direct evidence of actual bias on the part of either the jury or
the judge. There was ‘strong reason for thinking that the jury were
affected by the persistent and extravagant O’Keefe appeals to prejudice’.
The judge’s conduct was consistent with bias. Still, in the absence of
evidence supporting a finding of actual bias, the violation of international
law could be only that the judge ‘failed to discharge his paramount duty to
ensure that Loewen received a fair trial’.40 In this respect:
Neither State practice, the decisions of international tribunals nor the opinion of
commentators support the view that bad faith or malicious intention is an
38
Loewen, 26 June 2003, at para. 135.
39
Ibid. chap. XIX, at para. 138.
192
40
Ibid.
Denial of justice by the decision-maker
essential element of unfair and inequitable treatment or denial of justice amounting to a breach of international justice.41
In Loewen, the ‘disgraceful’ nature of the judge’s conduct of the trial was
manifested in his repeatedly allowing O’Keefe’s counsel to make ‘extensive irrelevant and highly prejudicial references’ to: (i) Loewen’s foreign
nationality; (ii) race-based distinctions between the two litigants; and
(iii) class-based distinctions between them.
With respect to nationality, O’Keefe’s case was presented ‘from beginning to end on the basis that Jerry O’Keefe was a war hero and ‘fighter for
his country’ who epitomised local business interests, and was the victim of a
ruthless foreign (Canadian) corporate predator’. Loewen was depicted as
financed by the ‘Shanghai Bank’; O’Keefe intimated that both Loewen and
the bank might be controlled by ‘the Japanese’. The truth is that Loewen
was partly financed by the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, which is an
English and Hong Kong bank. Yet O’Keefe’s counsel repeatedly referred to his
client’s fighting for his country against the Japanese and exhorted the jury
members to ‘do their duty as Americans and Mississippians’.
The arbitrators were not persuaded by the US Government’s attempts
to persuade them that these comments were justifiable comment on
Loewen’s use of its ‘unequal financial means to oppress [O’Keefe]’.
They wrote that the ‘rhetoric of O’Keefe’s counsel went well beyond
any legitimate exercise’.
The US Government sought to convince the arbitrators that ‘the vast
majority’ of references to nationality, when viewed in context, were
intended to identify the place where relevant events took place. The
tribunal was unconvinced.
The arbitrators also found that O’Keefe had engaged in a ‘racial politics
strategy’ which went well beyond such legitimate aims as defining relevant
markets for the purposes of arguments about unfair competition; they
referred to ‘the efforts of O’Keefe to suggest that O’Keefe did business
with black and white people alike whereas Loewen did business with white
people’. The judge was African American, as were eight of the twelve jurors.
As for ‘class-based prejudice’: the arbitrators were understandably
impressed by the way in which O’Keefe’s counsel concluded his address
to the jurors:
Ray [Loewen] comes down here, he’s got his yacht up there, he can go to cocktail
parties and all that, but do you know how he’s financing that? By 80 and 90 year
41
Ibid. at para. 132.
193
Denial of Justice in International Law
old people who go to get to a funeral, who go to pay their life savings, goes into
this here, and it doesn’t mean anything to him. Now, they’ve got to be
stopped . . .
1 billion dollars, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. You’ve got to put your foot
down, and you may never get this chance again. And you’re not just helping the
people of Mississippi but you’re helping poor people, grieving families everywhere. I urge you to put your foot down. Don’t let them get away with it. Thank
you, and may God bless you all.42
The arbitrators quoted counsel’s statement that:
The Loewen Group, Ray Loewen, Ray Loewen is not here to-day. The Loewen
Group is from Canada. He’s not here to-day. Do you think that every person
should be responsible and should step up to the plate and face their own actions?
Let me see a show of hands if you feel that everybody in America should have the
responsibility to do that.43
They referred to this as ‘skilful use by counsel for [O’Keefe] of the
opportunity to implant inflammatory and prejudicial materials in the
minds of the jury’.44 Gary (O’Keefe’s lawyer) spoke of Loewen’s ‘descent
on the State of Mississippi’. As an ‘extreme’ example of appeals to
national prejudice, the arbitrators pointed to the testimony of a former
US Secretary of Agriculture, ostensibly solicited to testify to O’Keefe’s
good character, who spoke of his (the Secretary’s) experience as a member
of government in protecting ‘the American market’ from Canadian wheat
farmers who drove American producers out of the market with low prices
only to inflate the prices once they had secured the market. Gary, in his
closing address to the jury, repeated this remark and explicitly compared
Loewen to the Canadian wheat farmers. The arbitrators described Gary’s
manner of ‘emphasising nationalism’ as follows: ‘‘‘[Y]our service on this
case is higher than any honor that a citizen of this country can have, short
of going to war and dying for your country;’’ . . . He described the
American jury system as one that O’Keefe ‘‘fought for and some died
for,’’ [and said that Loewen] ‘‘didn’t know that this man didn’t come
home just as an ace who fought for his country – he’s a fighter . . . He’ll
stand up for America and he has.’’ Mr Gary returned to the same theme at
the end of his closing address: ‘‘[O’Keefe] fought and some died for the
laws of this nation, and they’re [Loewen] going to put him down for being
American’’.’45
42
Ibid. at para. 68.
43
Ibid. at para. 57.
44
194
Ibid.
45
Ibid. at paras. 61–62.
Denial of justice by the decision-maker
Finally, it may be observed that the Loewen tribunal’s findings illustrate
the general proposition that the involvement of a jury in rendering a
national court judgment provides no insulation from responsibility under
international law. It is, as Freeman put it, ‘a link in the chain of justice
which is ultimately open to inspection in all its constituents by the
processes of international law’.46
On the other hand, jury verdicts are doubtless less likely to come into
question as a potential cause of state responsibility due to the existence of
corrective measures, either by the trial judge or by appellate jurisdictions,
such as orders for new trials or judgments notwithstanding the verdict.
In criminal cases, the most numerous historical precedents involved
failure by local juries to indict, let alone convict, individuals apparently
guilty of the murder, or indeed lynching, of unpopular foreigners.47 The
failure of prosecution of criminal acts gives rise to the possibility of denial
of justice in the same way as does any internationally defective operation
of a national judicial system (see the section on ‘Inadequate measures
against perpetrators of crimes against foreigners’ in Chapter 6).
Corruption
A rare instance of acknowledged corruption arose in the claim of Coles and
Croswell, espoused by the British Government on behalf of two of its
nationals convicted of theft in Haiti.48 A Special Commissioner appointed
by Britain described the matter as follows in his letter to the Haitian
Minister of Foreign Affairs:
The extraordinary behaviour of the jury at the trial, and the general character of
the proceedings are disclosed in the Judgment of the Court of Cassation of the
30th December, 1885.
That Judgment shows that the jury, whose deliberations should, according to
law, be secret, conducted themselves in the most unseemly manner by noisy
disputes and contradictions in open Court, and by disorderly proceedings in the
jury room. But the most remarkable feature in the case is that, on the 21st
December 1885, the Public Prosecutor was committed for trial for corrupting
46
Freeman at p. 363.
The Vorowski case is particularly memorable, involving the murder of a Russian
delegate to the Lausanne Conference in 1923. His apparent murderer was acquitted
by a local jury, prompting a Soviet boycott on Swiss products; Arnold J. Toynbee,
Survey of International Affairs 1924 (Oxford University Press, 1928), at pp. 258–259. (This
reprisal did not, it seems, create a permanent impediment to Swiss prosperity.)
48
Great Britain v. Haiti, 31 May 1886, 78 British and Foreign State Papers 1305.
47
195
Denial of Justice in International Law
some of the jury in order to obtain a conviction, and that no less than
five jurymen were similarly dealt with for having allowed themselves to be
tampered with.
It is difficult to understand how a verdict, delivered by such a jury, and under
such circumstances, could have been allowed to stand for a moment.
Yet the same Court of Cassation, which had on the 21st December, 1885,
directed the committal of the Public Prosecutor and five of the jurymen for
corruption, actually on the 30th of the same month refused to annul the sentence
of the Court of Assize, which was based on an admittedly corrupt verdict. It is
impossible to reconcile these two Judgments of the Court of Cassation, and a
more flagrant contradiction can hardly be conceived.49
Arbitrariness
Arbitrariness is not so much something opposed to a rule of law, as something
opposed to the rule of law . . . It is wilful disregard of due process of law, an act
which shocks, or at least surprises a sense of judicial propriety.50
Shortly after this oft-quoted passage was written by a chamber of the
International Court of Justice, the Amco II tribunal presided by Judge
Rosalyn Higgins (as she was to become) handed down the final award in
one of the earliest and longest-running cases under the aegis of the
International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes.
Amco v. Indonesia was brought by a group of companies which had
invested in the hotel business in Jakarta. They operated under a lease
and management agreement signed between Amco Asia Corp. (USA)
and PT Wisma, a corporate entity controlled by the Indonesian army.
Each party undertook to make capital investments and to share profits in
a hotel located on a site owned by PT Wisma. That agreement contained
a clause providing that disagreements should be decided by an arbitrator
named by the President of the International Chamber of Commerce
in Paris.
In order to operate in Indonesia, the investors applied for a licence to
establish a local subsidiary under the Foreign Capital Investment Law.
After the application had been examined by the Foreign Investment
Board and the Foreign Investment Evaluation Body, and agreed in
principle by the President of the Republic, the licence was granted by
49
50
Ibid. at p. 1328.
Case concerning Elettronica Sicula SpA (ELSI) (US v. Italy) 1989 ICJ Reports 15 at p. 76.
196
Denial of justice by the decision-maker
the Minister of Public Works. The licence provided that disputes between
the licensee and the government would be referred to ICSID arbitration.
The investors had a falling out with PT Wisma, primarily due to claims
by the latter concerning its profit share. Ultimately PT Wisma took over
control of the hotel with the assistance of the Indonesian armed forces. It
then successfully petitioned the Indonesian courts for rescission of the
lease and management agreement, alleging a number of breaches by the
investors, including their alleged failure to make their capital contributions in full. A jurisdictional objection to the effect that the matter should
be referred to ICC arbitration in Paris was rejected. Meanwhile, PT
Wisma informed the Indonesian Capital Investment Coordinating
Board (known under its acronym as ‘BKPM’) of certain alleged irregularities by the investors. BKPM sought and obtained presidential permission to revoke the investment licence.
ICSID arbitral proceedings were commenced by the investors in 1981.
The matter did not involve amounts of macroenomic significance; the
claim was never put higher than US$15 million, and the ultimate award
was for a principal amount of some US$2.6 million. Nevertheless, it
became one of the best-known international cases of the 1980s, giving
rise to lengthy decisions by three panels comprising a number of leading
international lawyers. The first arbitration was concluded by an award in
1984.51 That award was partially annulled by an ad hoc committee in
1986.52 The case was then resubmitted to a new tribunal which rendered
its award on the merits in 1990.53 By that stage, the case had already
traversed fundamental issues of applicable law, jurisdiction, standards of
review and – perhaps uniquely – the scope of res judicata when it arises
from an incomplete annulment.
For present purposes, however, three substantive claims addressed to
the tribunal in the resubmitted case, which might conveniently be
referred to as Amco II, are relevant:
*
*
the revocation of the licence violated procedural rights;
the revocation was not substantively justified;
51
20 November 1984, 1 ICSID Reports 413 (Foighel, Rubin, Goldman (presiding)).
16 May 1986, 1 ICSID Reports 509 (Feliciano, Giardina, Seidl-Hohenveldern
(presiding)).
53
31 May 1990, 1 ICSID Reports 569; rectification 10 October 1990, ibid. 638 (Lalonde,
Magid, Higgins (presiding)).
52
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Denial of Justice in International Law
*
the rescission of the agreement by the Indonesian courts was unlawful
because the local courts lacked jurisdiction and there was no evidence
of breach.
There were two stated grounds for revocation of the licence: failure to
invest the required amount of foreign capital and improper subcontracting of the investors’ obligations. The first tribunal had held that the
BKPM’s procedure had been unlawful. The investors had not been
given ‘warnings’ of purported non-observance of their obligations as
required by the relevant Indonesian regulations and by ‘general principles
of law’.54 Moreover, BKPM accepted PT Wisma’s allegations after only a
perfunctory examination, without allowing the investors to produce
documents or to examine and answer either a file submitted to BKPM
by PT Wisma or a BKPM report recommending revocation produced
within three days of PT Wisma’s first complaint – and indeed the very day
after receipt of the aforementioned file. Given the violation of ‘due
process of law’, the tribunal concluded that ‘the revocation of the
approval of the investment application was unlawfully and therefore
wrongfully decided, whatever the reasons on which it was based, and
even if, as a matter of substance, said reasons could have justified it’.55
This finding had not been disturbed by the ad hoc committee, and the
Amco II tribunal therefore took it as a res judicata. Reviewing the lengthy
record, the arbitrators nevertheless made some observations of their own.
They found that the BKPM’s examination was ‘rushed, over-reliant on
PT Wisma’s characterizations, factually careless, and insufficiently based
on detailed and independent verifications with the authorities concerned . . . the whole approach to the issue of revocation of the licence was
tainted by bad faith, reflected in events and procedures’.56 They noted
that the issue of fault was not entirely ‘black and white’. The investors’
accounts were to some extent unreliable. ‘While PT Amco’s behaviour
contained discreditable features, that fact could not justify BKPM’s
approach to the question of revocation.’57
54
1 ICSID Reports 413 at para. 198. The tribunal added: ‘It could not be argued, in this
respect, that discussion and defence would not have changed the administration’s
mind; because such argument would mean that the administration had decided in
advance not to take into account any argument of the investor whatsoever, which
would itself amount to a refusal of due process.’ Ibid. at para. 202.
55
Ibid. at para. 201. 56 Amco II at paras. 83 and 98. 57 Ibid. at para. 112.
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Denial of justice by the decision-maker
Retroactive application of laws
The claimant in the Mondev case complained about the retroactive application of an allegedly new rule adopted by the Massachusetts Supreme
Judiciary Court. As seen in the section on ‘No responsibility for misapplication of national law’ in Chapter 4, the very premise of this grievance was undermined when the international arbitral tribunal found that
the state court’s decision ‘fell well within the interstitial scope of lawmaking exercised by courts such as those of the United States’.58 But even
if this had not been the case, ‘it is normally a matter for local courts to
determine whether and in what circumstances to apply new decisional
law retrospectively’.59
It is necessary to test the word ‘normally’ in the just-quoted phrase.
Unfettered discretion to apply new or modified rules retrospectively may
obviously result in the negation of legal security. In the field of human
rights, judicial decisions are fiercely resisted if they have the effect of
creating criminal liability where none existed before. This issue has been
dealt with by the European Court of Human Rights under Article 7 of the
European Convention.60 ‘If there is any analogy at all,’ the award in
Mondev reasoned, ‘it is much fainter in civil cases.’ The arbitrators then
dismissed the complaint out of hand: ‘Assuming, for the sake of argument,
that standards of this kind might be applicable [to a claim of unjust or
inequitable treatment], in the Tribunal’s view there was no contravention
of any such standards in the present case.’61
It is not difficult to see that the retroactive application of law by judges
must be characterised as a denial of justice if the courts thereby make
themselves the tools of ‘targeted legislation’ (see the section so named in
Chapter 6). The ‘law’ allegedly applied retroactively in Mondev was of a
different nature. It was judge-made law of the kind particularly prevalent
in the common law, described by the Mondev award as ‘interstitial’ –
presumably by comparison to the framework of positive legislation or
regulation. But ‘decisional law’ too, whether one calls it case law or
jurisprudence, may be more than interstitial. Surprising departures from
58
Mondev at para. 137. 59 Ibid.
See S.W. v. United Kingdom and C.R. v. United Kingdom, 22 November 1995, (1996) 21
EHRR 363, at paras. 32–36; Streletz, Kessler & Krenz v. Germany, 22 March 2001, (2001)
33 EHRR 31, at paras. 46–108.
61
Mondev at para. 138, citing Carbonara & Ventura v. Italy, 30 May 2000, [2000] ECHR
205, at paras. 64–69; Agoudimos & Cefallonian Sky Shipping Co. v. Greece, 28 June 2001,
[2001] ECHR 402, at paras. 29–30.
60
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Denial of Justice in International Law
settled patterns of reasoning or outcomes, or the sudden emergence of a
full-blown rule where none had existed, must be viewed with the greatest
scepticism if their effect is to disadvantage a foreigner. If it is targeted,
‘decisional law’ is no different from statutes or decrees, and may constitute
an international wrong.
Gross incompetence
This category is intended to cover one type of the miscarriages of justice
which some persist in referring to as substantive denial of justice. That
category should be jettisoned for reasons given in the section on ‘The
demise of substantive denial of justice’ in Chapter 4. Grossly incompetent
judgments are precisely the kind of decisions which, in the words of
Fitzmaurice, no ‘competent judge could reasonably have made’.62 They
therefore are the embodiment of the state’s violation of its duty to establish and maintain a decent system of justice.
It must be admitted that many cases do not fit neatly into the categories
chosen to organise this chapter. There is considerable overlap. Is the
gravamen a matter of xenophobic prejudice, or irrationality, or gross
incompetence? In truth, where a denial of justice has occurred it is likely
that gross incompetence coexists with other deep flaws.63
One case which can be put in multiple categories is Idler, which indeed
recurs several times in this chapter. For present purposes, the following
passage in the award is worth quoting. It analysed the legal theory,
purporting to extend to the government the rights of a recent minor to
void contracts entered into on his behalf:
A moment’s reflection will show the benefit was not universally applicable to
Venezuela’s contracts, and that her courts were powerless to make them so.
A contract or transaction subject to the right had implied in it a condition of
defeasance and restoration at the option of the privileged party. It was as
though it had written in the body thereof that the minor, or king, or other
favored person reserved the option to disaffirm and annul it partially or
altogether, and have restored him all things lost or parted with on account
62
63
Fitzmaurice at p. 114.
A similar comment may be made about Sawtelle v. Waddell & Reed, Inc., No. 2330 (NY
App. Div. 1st Dept.), 13 February 2003, where an arbitral award of punitive damages
in the amount of $25 million was vacated by a New York court as arbitrary and irrational,
being ‘grossly disproportionate to the harm suffered’. (The claimants in Loewen would
doubtless have liked to have their $500 million jury verdict reviewed by that court.)
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Denial of justice by the decision-maker
thereof. Could such a right in Venezuela, however fully possessed by succession, affect her contractual or other obligations with other states? Had her
treaties implied in them any such condition? And was the case in any wise
different as to contracts with citizens of such states made therein, where the
right was not in vogue?
These were North American contracts, made at Philadelphia, where the right
did not obtain. When Venezuela, so to say, came there to enter into them, she
came, as would Great Britain or any other person competent to contract, with
not a privilege less, not one more. Her right of restitutio she left behind her. The
Philadelphia contracts had no condition of defeasance implied in them. When
sent to Venezuela for execution, none were added. No power there, judicial or
other, could engraft it on them. Therefore, as to those contracts themselves, it is
perfectly clear Venezuela had not the right of restitutio in integrum. Unless,
consequently, the law was that the right pertained to judgments when it
did not to their bases, these legal proceedings can not be upheld, even if
otherwise valid.
To assert such to be the state of the law is to say that Venezuela, as to the
contracts, was an adult, full grown and stalwart, but as to their enforcement, a –
minor! Such a condition, under the ancient Roman law, would seem to have
been an impossibility.64
There are other precedents where international adjudicators found the
evidentiary approach of the local court to have been so unfair against the
foreigner as to vitiate the outcome. In the Bronner case against Mexico,
where Umpire Thornton, after observing that he was ‘always most
reluctant to interfere with the sentences of judicial courts’, nevertheless
felt bound to hold that a confiscation of the goods of an importer, on the
grounds that he had intended to defraud the customs authorities, was ‘so
unfair as to amount to a denial of justice’.65 The claimant had taken ‘more
than usual precautions . . . to prevent the possibility of any such accusation’. He could not conceivably ‘have harboured an intention to deceive
with the slightest hope of success’, because he had submitted the amended
invoices which the court had deemed to be proof of subterfuge to the
Mexican consul at Liverpool with every expectation that they would be
transmitted to the Mexican authorities.
A similar case was that of the Orient, decided by the commission
created under the US–Mexico treaty of 11 April 1839.66 It also related
to the confiscation of the property of a US national, in this case a
schooner and its cargo. The only evidence against the alleged offender
64
65
Jacob Idler v. Venezuela, Moore, Arbitrations 3491, at p. 3510.
US v. Mexico, ibid. at p. 3134. 66 US v. Mexico, ibid. at p. 3229.
201
Denial of Justice in International Law
was the testimony of the revenue collector, who presented a document he
claimed to be a false manifest. Four other witnesses (including the
collector’s own assistant) testified that he had in fact refused to take the
manifest presented to him, because it was not in Spanish, and left it on
the table of the master’s cabin. Upholding the claim, the commissioners
wrote:
The decision of the court confiscating the vessel and cargo was thus founded on a
single fact, ascertained to exist only on the testimony of a single witness, while it
was expressly denied by four others, having an equal opportunity of knowing the
truth and equally entitled to credit. A decision thus given in direct opposition to
so strong a preponderance of the testimony cannot be entitled to respect. It
indicates strongly a predetermination on the part of the judge to confiscate the
property without reference to the testimony. This opinion is strengthened by the
fact that fourteen days before the decision was made the judge had agreed to pay
certain expenses out of the proceeds of the confiscation . . . A judge who would
thus, two weeks in advance of a trial and before the testimony was examined,
pledge himself to make a particular decision, would not be likely to be very
scrupulous in the examination of the evidence, and certainly could claim no very
great degree of respect for his decision.67
It is important to perceive that this aspect of the international sanction
of denial of justice does not seek to second-guess national authorities’
interpretation of propositions of law as such. O’Connell captured it well
when he wrote: ‘Bad faith and not judicial error seems to be the heart of
the matter, and bad faith may be indicated by an unreasonable departure
from the rules of evidence and procedure.’68
Pretence of form
Unscrupulous judges may cover up a multitude of sins by an abuse of
form to mask an internationally wrongful purpose. Indeed, all types of
denial of justice considered in this chapter could be occulted in this
fashion. It is essential that international adjudicators be able to go behind
empty formality if international standards are not to be overwhelmed by
the handiwork of cynical intelligence.
In the First Hearing of the prisoner Rubashov in Darkness at Noon, the
Examining Magistrate Ivanov leaves no illusions about the objective of
67
68
Ibid. at p. 3231.
D. P. O’Connell, International Law (2nd edn, London: Stevens & Sons, 1970), at p. 948.
202
Denial of justice by the decision-maker
the exercise: ‘For the public, one needs, of course, a trial and legal
justification.’69 Later on, Ivanov is physically liquidated, so Rubashov is
informed, for his lenient interrogation techniques. He is replaced by the
implacable Gletkin. The latter ultimately breaks Rubashov’s will, by a
combination of endless questioning, sleep deprivation and environmental
discomfort (the emblematic hard chair, blinding lights, windowless room).
Yet Gletkin answers Rubashov instantly when he asks why he has not
been treated with violence:
‘You mean physical torture,’ said Gletkin in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘As you know,
that is forbidden by our criminal code.’
He goes on to explain:
The political utility of your confession at the trial will lie in its voluntary
character.70
And indeed at the trial Rubashov is duly asked whether he wants an
advocate for his defence (he declines) and whether he has any complaint
to be made about the investigation (he has none). When the prisoner
asks for an interruption due to an intolerable toothache (from an
untreated root which the prison doctor had offered to excise, but without anaesthesia) he makes it possible for the following day’s newspaper
to report:
It is typical of the correct procedure of revolutionary justice that the President
immediately granted this wish and, with a shrug of contempt, gave the order for
the hearing to be interrupted for five minutes.71
In a moment of candour, Gletkin explains that differences of opinion are
intolerable because they may confuse and unsettle the masses; they
compromise ‘the imperious necessity for the Party to be united’.
Therefore, Rubashov’s role at the trial was:
to gild the Right, to blacken the Wrong. The policy of opposition is wrong. Your
task is therefore to make the opposition contemptible; to make the masses
understand that opposition is a crime and that the leaders of the opposition are
criminals.72
69
Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon (1940; trans. Daphne Hardy, London: Folio Society,
1980), at p. 94.
70
Ibid. at p. 222. 71 Ibid. at p. 247. 72 Ibid. at p. 237.
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Denial of Justice in International Law
And so Rubashov obediently admits to preposterous accusations of plotting
to assassinate the Leader of the Party, and of conspiring with foreign
enemies, although his true ‘crime’ is his ‘sentimental’ but intolerably
‘oppositional’ disapproval of the brutal methods of the regime. In return,
as he is sent off to be shot in the neck, Gletkin offers him only one comfort in
the form of the promise of a posthumous explanation of historical necessity:
after the victory, one day when it can do no more harm, the material of the secret
archives will be published . . . And then you . . . will be given the sympathy and
pity which are denied today.73
The point of recalling Koestler’s magnum opus is simple: if Rubashov had
had the possibility of bringing an action before an international court of
human rights, the Soviet Union would obviously have responded by
pointing to the punctiliousness of its procedural code and of the way it
was specifically applied in his case.74 International law must go behind the
form, or else international law will serve not to eradicate injustice, but to
frown upon clumsiness.
Summary
Some denials of justice may be readily recognised: refusal of access to
court to defend legal rights, refusal to decide, unconscionable delay,
73
74
Ibid. at p. 238.
Darkness at Noon never once mentions the name of the country where the trial takes
place. As if seeking to dispel any doubt, the Soviet Union’s representative to the first
session of the UN Human Rights Commission (Valentin Tepliakov) in early 1947
reacted sharply to the declaration by the Lebanese delegate to the effect that the first
principle to guide the work of the Commission should be that the human person is
more important than any national group to which he may belong. Any pressure from a
group to coerce consent should be held to be unacceptable. Tepliakov replied that this
was completely unsuitable; Summary Records, UN Doc. E/CN.4/SR 14 at p. 4.
‘‘I do not understand,’ he said, professing puzzlement at Malik’s reference to ‘pressure’ exerted on
individuals. ‘What does he mean?’ The rights of the individual, he insisted, must be seen in
relation to the individual’s obligations to the community, which is ‘the main body which provides
for his existence, and the enjoyment of the human rights which belong to him.’ On one point he
was absolutely unambiguous: ‘We cannot divide the individual from society.’’
Mary Ann Glendon, A World Made New (New York: Random House, 2001), at p. 40.
(It should not be forgotten that even some Western powers who today champion the
virtues of liberal democracy, perhaps disoriented in the twilight of their colonial era,
adopted a disturbingly ambiguous posture with respect to individual human rights.)
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Denial of justice by the decision-maker
manifest discrimination, corruption, or subservience to executive
pressure.
Unfairness in the hearing of a case is a more difficult matter.
Disappointed litigants tend to see unfairness everywhere. Yet the
varieties of legal culture that enrich the world are to be respected; a
method for the reception of evidence is not unfair because a foreigner
finds it odd. The legitimacy of local practice should be acknowledged
by the international adjudicator as well as by the complainant. It is
often surpassingly difficult to evaluate fairness without having been
present; perhaps not with respect to some formal matters, like failure
of notice to attend, which may be a matter of undisputable fact, but
with respect to subjective matters, like an atmosphere of harassment,
which are difficult to reconstitute from a written record. International
adjudicators must pass judgment in a necessarily subjective manner.
States are most unlikely, in any foreseeable future, to establish general
international appellate jurisdictions to pass comprehensive judgment
on the decisions of national courts; they would not tolerate that a
similar thing entered through the back door in the guise of sanctions
for denial of justice. Hence the unavoidability of formulations that are
at once open-textured and indicative of the exceptional foundation
necessary to make good on such claims against states. One might say
that denial of justice arises when proceedings are so faulty as to exclude all
reasonable expectation of a fair decision, but the choice of words is infinite.
What they all have in common is that they lead to a debate to be
resolved by appeals to experience, not to the dictionary.
How do international adjudicators then recognise a denial of justice
when confronted with a given set of facts? One basic postulate is that
denial of justice is not limited to cases where the doors of justice were
literally shut. A system of justice may fall short of international
standards in many other ways. No definitive list of instances could
be presented, for it would soon be invalidated by new fact patterns,
untested forms of organisation of systems of justice, and the boundless
capacities of human invention. Recurring instances are unreasonable
delay, politically dictated judgments, corruption, intimidation, fundamental breaches of due process, and decisions so outrageous as to be
inexplicable otherwise than as expressions of arbitrariness or gross
incompetence.
A further basic postulate is that some acts or omissions by governmental authorities are sufficiently closely related to the administration of
205
Denial of Justice in International Law
justice that they must also be deemed capable of generating international
delinquency under the heading of denial of justice: failures of enforcement, the implementation of sanctions against persons or property without trial, failure of investigation or indictment, lengthy imprisonment
without trail, arbitrarily lenient or harsh punishment.
206
8
Remedies and sanctions
General principles: restitutio, damnum emergens, lucrum
cessans
Traditionally, the issue of reparation was central to the subject of denial of
justice. It was the very objective of the exercise of diplomatic protection.
Yet the International Law Commission’s rapporteur on Diplomatic
Protection, Professor John Dugard, made it clear in his First Report1
that his work would include no attempt to formulate principles of reparation, but rather defer to the ILC Articles on State responsibility.2 Articles
34–36 of the ILC Articles provide:
34. Forms of reparation
Full reparation for the injury caused by the internationally wrongful act shall
take the form of restitution, compensation and satisfaction, either singly or in
combination, in accordance with the provisions of this Chapter.
35. Restitution
A State responsible for an internationally wrongful act is under an obligation to
make restitution, that is, to re-establish the situation which existed before the
wrongful act was committed, provided and to the extent that restitution:
(a) is not materially impossible;
(b) does not involve a burden out of all proportion to the benefit deriving from
restitution instead of compensation.
1
International Law Commission (Dugard), First Report on Diplomatic Protection, UN
Doc. A/CN.4/506 at p. 12, para. 35.
2
Report of the International Law Commission on the work of its 48th Session, 6 March –
26 July 1996, UN Doc. A/51/10 at pp. 141–142.
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Denial of Justice in International Law
36. Compensation
1. The State responsible for an internationally wrongful act is under an
2.
obligation to compensate for the damage caused thereby, insofar as such
damage is not made good by restitution.
The compensation shall cover any financially assessable damage including
loss of profits insofar as it is established.
These Articles are important, and will inform any current discussion of
remedies under international law. Yet they are not designed to cater
specifically to the particular enquiries that are germane to cases of denial
of justice.
Some such cases have no difficulty applying the general rule, established with venerable authority by the Permanent Court of International
Justice in the Chorzów Factory case,3 that the sanction of illicit acts should,
to the extent possible, extinguish their consequences and re-establish the
status quo ante. Judge de Visscher opined with specific reference to denial of
justice that the ‘normal’ reparation should be restitutio in integrum.4 The
easiest case is that of payment obligations wrongfully imposed upon the
claimant; they are simply annulled.5 The ordinary case of a claimant
denied the right to collect a judgment is also straightforward; the
damages, as in the Martini case, will be the uncollected amount, plus
interest.6 It may be that the wrongful refusal to enforce a judgment
leads to additional damages – such as the claimant’s bankruptcy in the
Fabiani case7 – but such complicating factors are not unique to cases of
denial of justice. They fall to be determined within the limits of the
recovery of indirect losses (discussed below).
But sometimes it is impossible to unscramble the omelette. The very
event of a wrongful national judgment may have set off a series of events
involving third parties. Acceleration clauses may have been triggered
under loan agreements. Secured rights may have matured in the guise
of deemed events of default. Transactions, or entire enterprises, may have
been irredeemably compromised.
Under the restitutio approach of the Martini award, Loewen would have
been entitled to the reversal of the iniquitous judgment. But in the meanwhile a settlement had ensued, and the winning plaintiff had encashed
3
Germany v. Poland, (1928) PCIJ, Series A, No. 17. 4 De Visscher at p. 436.
Martini (Italy v. Venezuela), 3 May 1930, II RIAA 975.
6
See Montano (Peru v. US ), Moore, Arbitrations 1630, at p. 1637.
7
Antoine Fabiani (no. 1) (France v. Venezuela), Moore, Arbitrations 4878, at p. 4910.
5
208
Remedies and sanctions
$175 million – and doubtless spent much of it. Certainly tens of millions
would have been paid over to Mr Gary, the contingency lawyer. The
international arbitral tribunal had authority to recognise the international
responsibility of the US, but no jurisdiction to order Messrs O’Keefe and
Gary to disgorge sums of money obtained under a settlement agreement.
The only respondent before the arbitrators was the US. Restitutio would
surely imply a payment of $175 million, but does it not also imply that that
sum must be reduced by what would, on a balance of probabilities, have
happened to Loewen if the clock had indeed been turned back? For
Loewen’s previous situation had been that of a besieged defendant.
Should the tribunal judge what a ‘likely’ outcome would have been in a
trial not contaminated by unfairness? Or should it notionally ‘purge’ the
actual trial of the consequences of unfairness, e.g. by considering that the
amount of compensatory, as opposed to punitive, damages were based on
creditable evidence of a contract breach and therefore represented what
Loewen would have lost in the normal course of events (i.e. a proper trial).
That amount would therefore fall to be discounted.
The solutions to these questions are elusive.
In reading old awards, one must also be careful to verify whether the
compromis under which the relevant commission or tribunal had been
given its authority contained limitations on either the types of liability
or the measure of reparation that could be recognised. (Such limitations
were the political price of obtaining assent to international adjudication.)
Pleaders often miss the point, for example, that the well-known El Triunfo
award simply could not grant damages on account of lost profits arising
from the breach of the relevant maritime concession agreement because
the inter-state agreement explicitly forbade any such recovery.
Adjudicators have struggled since time immemorial with the limits of
compensable damages. Yet the concepts are not complex. At the one
extreme are damages which demonstrably arise as the evidently direct
consequence of the wrongful act. At the other extreme, there are damages
which are insufficiently established either in fact or as a matter of causation. They are typically referred to as ‘too remote’, ‘unforeseeable’ or
‘speculative’. In between there is an area of indirect damages which are
controversial.8
8
See the ILC Commentary under Article 36, in James Crawford, The International Law
Commission’s Articles on State Responsibility: Introduction, Text and Commentaries (Cambridge
University Press, 2002), at pp. 218–230.
209
Denial of Justice in International Law
That they may be recovered is beyond cavil. The difficulty is the
permanent haze that overlies the boundary between what is too remote and
what is merely indirect. In addition, there are contractual stipulations – or
indeed treaty stipulations, as in the El Triunfo case – which exclude the
award of indirect compensation, or compensation on account of lost profits.
Such stipulations create their own difficulties of interpretation,9 and moreover the risk that awards limited by them fail to be recognised as exceptions.
In principle, this passage written by Sir Hersch Lauterpacht in 1927
has lost none of its cogency or authority:
The border line between direct and indirect damages, or between prospective
and merely speculative profits, is seldom clear, and its determination is often
dependent upon the subjective estimate of the arbitrator, who is, in fact, guided
not so much by the technical distinctions between different kinds of damages, as
by the wish, perfectly justified in law, to afford full redress to the injured. But to
maintain that international law disregards altogether compensation for lucrum
cessans is as repellant to justice and common sense, as it is out of accord with the
practice of international tribunals.10
9
Consider these hypothetical examples:
(A)
(B)
(C)
Six ships are expropriated. Their replacement value is 100.
A transportation company owning six ships is expropriated. It is established that
a bona fide third-party purchaser was prepared to purchase the company, which
benefited from a portfolio of advantageous contracts, for 200.
Same as B, but instead of proof of a third-party offer, there is an economically
irreproachable demonstration that the going-concern value to the expropriated
owners is 200.
(A) is not difficult. But how is (B) different from (A)? See Crawford, Articles, at p. 226:
‘The value of goodwill and other indicators of profitability may be uncertain, unless
derived from information provided by a recent sale or acceptable arms-length offer ’ (emphasis added).
And if (B) is accepted, why not (C)? The demonstrable market value of a disposed asset
has been accepted by international tribunals, as in de Sabla (US v. Panama, 29 June 1933,
VI RIAA 358) ( proof of purchase offers for lots in Panama) and in this dictum in SPP v.
Egypt (Southern Pacific Properties (Middle East) Limited v. Egypt, award, 20 May 1992,
3 ICSID Reports 189, at p. 237: an arm’s-length transaction ‘should, in principle, be
the best indication of the value of an asset’. But that may imply the recovery of
anticipated lost profits: i.e. the purchasers are willing to go beyond the replacement
value of the six ships (which are not for sale) to pay an enhanced value based on their
expectations that the transportation company has demonstrable prospects of profitable
operations. What then is the difference between (B) and (C); or between enterprise
value and lost profits?
10
Sir Hersch Lauterpacht, Private Law Sources and Analogies of International Law (London/
New York: Longman, 1927, repr. 2002), at pp. 148–149.
210
Remedies and sanctions
Another controversial area relates to non-material or ‘moral’ damages.
Claims for mental suffering, injury to feelings, humiliation, shame, or
injury to credit and reputation are predictable in the context of denial of
justice, where the personal integrity of the victim may have been profoundly affected. A person’s psyche may be ruined by unlawful commitment to a psychiatric institution11; a prosperous enterprise may be ruined
by wrongful condemnation or the refusal to give effect to valid judgments
in its favour.12 As with indirect damages, the controversy tends to arise in
cases of concrete application; the principle, as such, is well established.
Non-material damages, in the words of Umpire Parker in the Lusitania
cases, are ‘very real, and the mere fact that they are difficult to measure or
estimate by money standards makes them none the less real and affords
no reason why the injured person should not be compensated’.13
A final general consideration of utmost importance is to recognise that
a state may not escape international responsibility for denial of justice by
relying on a judgment which recognises the wrong but purports to erase it
by the grant of paltry compensation. The issue is quite similar to that of
expropriation; international responsibility is not excluded by insufficient
compensation. The sufficiency of compensation is necessarily within the
purview of international adjudicators; otherwise the recognition of an
international wrong would be an empty gesture, and states could escape
liability on the flimsiest pretext. In the Howland case,14 the claimants were
thus able to prosecute their international claim notwithstanding an ostensibly favourable Mexican Supreme Court judgment restituting to them a
significant quantity of beeswax which had been wrongfully seized by
11
See Timofeyev v. Russia, 23 October 2003, [2003] ECHR 546.
In Philis v. Greece, which involved a less compelling victim, namely an engineer thwarted
in his attempts to pursue contractual claims, the European Court of Human Rights
nevertheless held: ‘The feeling of frustration generated by the impossibility of assuming
control of the defence of his own interests, as well as the prolonged anxiety as to the
outcome of his disputes with his debtors, must have caused the applicant some
non-pecuniary damage. Making an assessment on an equitable basis . . . the Court
awards him 1,000,000 drachmas under this head’ (27 August 1991, (1991) 13 EHRR
741, at para. 73).
12
Antoine Fabiani (no. 1) (France v. Venezuela), Moore, Arbitrations, at p. 4878.
13
US v. Germany, 1 November 1923, VII RIAA 32, at p. 40, quoted with approval in
Crawford, Articles, at pp. 223–224. For an example where a ‘strenuously urged’ claim
for loss of credit, despite a finding of liability for the depravation of property with the
complicity of officials, and evidence of a harrowing ordeal in chaotic regions of
Venezuela, was disallowed as ‘entirely too indefinite and uncertain’, see Poggioli (Italy v.
Venezuela), J. H. Ralston, Venezuela Arbitrations of 1903 (Washington, DC: US
Government Printing Office, 1904), 847, at p. 870.
14
G. G. S. Howland v. Mexico, Moore, Arbitrations, at p. 3227.
211
Denial of Justice in International Law
customs officials. (Without hearing anyone on behalf of the owners, they
had decided that the wax was from Havana – and thus a prohibited
import due to a war with Spain – rather than St Petersburg as duly
recorded by US officials and certified by the Mexican counsel in New
York.) The problem was that the wax had deteriorated during the period
between its seizure and release (from December 1825 to April 1828). The
Mexican commissioners argued that the Mexican judgment had finally
disposed of ‘the merits of the case’ by ordering restitution but no compensation for damages and costs. The umpire disagreed, and ordered
compensation comprising the original value of the ninety-three bales in
question, plus ‘duties, charges, and a moderate profit, together with the
expenses incurred in the recovery of the wax’,15 as well as interest. The
net recovery resulted from deducting the price finally obtained in Mexico
upon the release of the deteriorated wax. There seems to be no reason for
distinguishing between deterioration of the condition of the property and
that of the market price; in either case the mitigation is objectively
determined by the price obtained.
Vicarious damage and deterrence
As we have seen, international law first responded to denial of justice by
justifying a regime of reprisals. These sanctions were carried out by or under
the authorisation of the victim’s sovereign. By the beginning of the twentieth
century, the favoured mechanism had become that of diplomatic protection. Coercion under the colour of the state, initiated and indeed carried out
by private parties to satisfy private interests, became a thing of the past.
Nevertheless, in 1938 Freeman could still write that:
it is still undoubtedly accurate as a theoretical matter to speak of the State’s right
to resort to reprisals or war, if need be, to secure the justice that has been denied
to its nationals.16
Today, even that theoretical justification has disappeared in the wake of
the near-universal renunciation of force as a means of settling disputes.
Instead, international law has developed the doctrine of a ‘secondary
obligation’ to repair the damage resulting from the ‘original’ unlawful act.
When that secondary obligation too is breached, the victim’s state may be
expected to intensify diplomatic pressure, including the use of economic
15
Ibid. at p. 3228.
16
Freeman at p. 572.
212
Remedies and sanctions
bargaining chips and agitation in multilateral organisations, or indeed to
seize international jurisdictions.
Given the vast expansion of direct access to an adjudication by litigants
other than states, however, the most significant sanctions in contemporary practice are those imposed by national courts pursuant to international res judicata such as arbitral awards (or indeed national judgments
applying international law). This involves considerations of a number of
issues beyond the scope of this study, such as the scope of sovereign
immunity from execution, waivers of immunity, and the role of insurance
against the failure to respect awards or judgments.
What matters for present purposes is the conceptual shift in terms of the
remedies granted in cases of denial of justice as the bulk of practice has
shifted from diplomatic protection to direct private action against the
responsible state. In Bouchard’s day, and still in Freeman’s, the precedents almost invariably involved the claims of a state demanding reparations for damages to its own honour, or to prejudice caused to its
protected national, or both. In theory, the injured party was the claiming
state, not its national; once the claiming state was satisfied, the matter was
closed for the purposes of international law.
One consequence of this type of proceeding was that the state might
articulate its own prejudice, such as that arising from general ill-will
towards its citizens as a group, and might seek its own remedy, e.g.:
in the shape of an apology given with appropriate solemnity and, where proper,
the punishment of the guilty persons, either disciplinary or otherwise.17
In the Sartori case18 before the US – Peru Commission under the Treaty of
12 January 1863, the claimant was a US businessman residing in Chile. On
a business trip to Peru, he was detained by military forces. He was confined
for a duration of four months, and then released without any judicial
proceedings. In the meanwhile, his business was ruined. He therefore sought
compensation in the considerable amount of $118,755. The US
Commissioners favoured his cause; their Peruvian colleagues did not, observing that Sartori at his arrest had been carrying a package, in itself innocent
but entrusted to him by an insurrectionist military commander for delivery
to a common friend. The matter went to the Umpire (General Herran), who
concluded that the arrest and detention had been justified, but that ‘the
Government of Peru is responsible for the delay of 48 hours in taking the
formal declaration of Sartori, and for not having brought him to judgment’.
17
Ibid. at p. 575.
18
US v. Peru, Moore, Arbitrations, at p. 3120.
213
Denial of Justice in International Law
Having concluded that there was an international wrong, the Umpire
turned to the issue of damages. He found that the claimant’s theory of
causation was unacceptable, as encapsulated in this sentence:
Peru is not responsible for the fact that Mr. Sartori should have absented himself
from Valparaiso, leaving his affairs in the hands of an agent in whose good faith
he could place no reliance.19
He nevertheless concluded that the irregularity in Sartori’s treatment
should lead to financial compensation, reasoning as follows:
There is no circumstance leading to the belief that this omission was intentional
on the part of the Peruvian Government. Far from this, proofs exist that they
were not influenced by bad will or the spirit of persecution, and that it was their
desire to give no cause of complaint to the United States; but on the principle that
reparation ought to be made in cases where responsibility is incurred, however
small it may be, for noncompliance with the treaty, in order that each government may
place entire confidence in the good faith of the other, it seems to me that an equitable and
reasonable indemnity ought to be granted to Mr. Sartori.20
The phrase in italics would of course have no place in a case where the
individual private claimant has direct access against the respondent
government.
A second consequence was that the injured party had no right to develop
and articulate its own legal theory of remedies. The protecting state might
conceive a general approach to claims of damages on account of a large
group of citizens injured by the same respondent state. As was often the
case before a number of the commissions and tribunals established between
1850 and 1950, that general approach would then be applied as individual
claims were presented before separate bodies of adjudicators.
These features of bygone practice should be kept in mind as one
considers the precedents of the time. Equally, one should not exaggerate
the difficulty of referring to them. As the Permanent Court of
International Justice stated in the Chorzów Factory case:
It is a principle of international law that the reparation of a wrong may consist in
an indemnity corresponding to the damage which the nationals of the injured
State have suffered as a result of the act which is contrary to international law.
This is even the most usual form of reparation.21
19
21
Ibid. at p. 3124. 20 Ibid. at p. 3123 (emphasis added).
(1928) PCIJ, Series A, No. 17, at pp. 27–28.
214
Remedies and sanctions
And as every practising international lawyer knows, the fact that the
Chorzów Factory case involved two states litigating pursuant to the mechanism of diplomatic protection has not prevented that case from becoming a
seminal precedent for the calculation of damages in a myriad of international arbitrations initiated by private parties.
Illustrative precedents
The general rule applies here too; the reparation of an international
wrong may take the form of restitutio in integrum or in compensatory
damages calculated so as to efface the pecuniary consequences of the
delict. Here as elsewhere, theory bows to the historical preference for
restitutio, but international jurisprudence with respect to the law of claims
has for many generations found few situations where it is practicable.22
On the other hand, there are circumstances when restitutio is both
appropriate and practical. For example, obligations placed on a foreigner
by a civil judgment vitiated by a denial of justice may simply be annulled
by the relevant international jurisdiction, as in the Martini case.23 Or a
criminal conviction handed down in such circumstances may likewise be
held without effect, with or without the possibility of a retrial depending
on the circumstances.
The Fabiani award is a leading and venerable precedent. The French
claimant had obtained an award from a private arbitral tribunal in 1880
declaring him entitled to certain sums owed by a past Venezuelan partner
and the exclusive owner of certain property located in Venezuela.
Fabiani’s attempts to execute this award in Venezuela were comprehensively frustrated by an unjustifiable series of delays and suspensions. First,
his case was halted to allow a putative appeal for which there existed no
proper mechanism. Next, the pretext of a specious conflict of jurisdiction
was invoked to paralyse the process. Finally, the competent court simply
failed to put Fabiani’s petition to enforce his award on its schedule for
hearings.24 As a result, Fabiani could not recover considerable assets to
which he was legally entitled, and, exhausted by interminable and costly
litigation, fell into bankruptcy. The unpaid debts which caused his
22
For an exception and a learned exposition of the matter, see the award of 19 January
1977 by Professor René-Jean Dupuy, sitting as sole arbitrator in Texaco Overseas
Petroleum Company/California Asiatic Oil Co. v. Libya, (1978) 17 ILM 1, at pp. 31–36.
23
Italy v. Venezuela, 3 May 1930, II RIAA 975.
24
Cf. Revpower Ltd v. Shanghai Far-East Aero-Technology Import and Export Corporation,
discussed in the section entitled ‘Refusal to judge’ in Chapter 7.
215
Denial of Justice in International Law
bankruptcy represented sums far less than those which he would have
recovered if his award had been enforced.
A substantial award was rendered in the amount of some 4.3 million
francs. The largest element of the award, 1.8 million francs, was on
account of losses caused by the bankruptcy and the resulting closing of
his business; these were the:
immediate consequence of the denials of justice, since Fabiani was thrown into
bankruptcy at Maracaibo for the non-payment of sums greatly inferior to those
which execution of the [foreign] judgment would have obtained for him.25
The second largest element, 1.5 million francs, was ‘indirect’ damages,
which the arbitrator considered to be due since Fabiani, given his proven
capability in the local business milieu, would have expanded his profitable
business but for the fact that ‘by the fault of the Venezuelan judicial
authorities, he lost his property and prestige altogether’. (The award also
included damages in the amount owed under the original private arbitral
award, as well as for Fabiani’s costs.)
When awarding damages for denials of justice, international adjudicators
are looking at a delict of a different nature from a breach of a commercial
contract. In some cases it can be specially demonstrated that the breach of the
contract deprived the claimant of funds which he was in a position to put to
particularly advantageous use. Such awards are rare. International tribunals
are seldom persuaded to give indirect damages for the loss of high-yield
ventures, but rather consider that a prudent rate of return on safe money
markets are the appropriate standard by which to assess the damages.
A denial of justice, however, by its nature may deprive the victim of
more than a sum of money. Precisely because judicial institutions are
involved, an unjust judgment may have vast deleterious consequences. In
Fabiani, as seen, repeated denials of justice led to bankruptcy and a loss of
prestige which curtailed what had until then been the claimant’s successful career in Venezuela. The arbitrator awarded substantial damages on
account of ‘lost profits’ and ‘other gains by exploiting additional sources of
revenue’, which he declared were the ‘immediate consequences’ of the
bankruptcy and to be distinguished from the similarly substantial indirect
damages awarded because the amounts granted under the original
awards had been unproductive for so many years. International lawyers
today are likely to refer to both types of damage as indirect, and to have no
difficulty in accepting the reality of damages flowing from the unlawful
25
Antoine Fabiani (no. 1) (France v. Venezuela), Moore, Arbitrations 4878, at p. 4913.
216
Remedies and sanctions
inaccessibility of capital; but tend to apply a rate of interest. Since the
movement of the second billiard ball is the consequence of the cue striking
the cue ball, the physical act of the player is the cause – but is nevertheless
indirect. It is a mistake for judges or arbitrators to think that they have to
‘improve’ the status of the loss by declaring it to be direct.
The case of Cotesworth and Powell26 concerned a judge in Barranquilla
who colluded with an assignee in bankruptcy to rob the claimants of
property held by a failed partnership, rendered decisions without a hearing, and then disappeared with all documents – making it impossible for
the claimants to prove their ownership. To add injury to injury, the
Colombian authorities proclaimed a decree of amnesty which prevented
any action against the judge.
Aiming to grant reparations that would restore ‘the state of affairs as it
would have been if justice had been followed from the beginning’, the
award stated that:
if the Government, by means of its amnesty, relieved of responsibility the authors
of the deeds forming the basis and foundation of this claim, it can be affirmed, in
strict justice, that in doing so it assumed that responsibility.
Accordingly, the award was for payment of ‘the value of the property
unjustly attached and not returned’.
To this amount interest of 5 per cent was awarded, the commissioner
stating that:
it would be absurd to assume that the legitimate property of an individual can be
taken from him and kept and used for years and then returned finally without the
slightest remuneration.
For all its factual complications, Idler27 was a straightforward case when it
came to damages. The claimant had recovered a judgment on a contractual claim against the public treasury for non-payment of deliveries under a
contract. Four years later, the judgment was annulled by a court found to
have been incompetent, acting without a legal basis and submissive to
governmental pressure. Finding that Venezuela had been culpable of a
denial of justice, the arbitral tribunal awarded the amount of the original
judgment plus contractual interest (6 per cent) from the date thereof.
26
27
Great Britain v. Colombia, Moore, Arbitrations at p. 2050.
Jacob Idler v. Venezuela, Moore, Arbitrations, at p. 3491. The case is discussed at length in
Chapter 6, especially in the section on ‘Governmental interference’.
217
Denial of Justice in International Law
(The period during which interest ran, it should be noted, was among the
longest in the annals of international arbitration: about seventy years.)
In Smith v. Marianao,28 local authorities had instituted illegal expropriation proceedings and the claimant’s property was partially demolished.
He then obtained a judgment declaring that the process was illegal, but
his subsequent petition to be restored to possession was denied. Finding a
denial of justice, the arbitrators evaluated the property (giving weight to
factors such as its unobstructed waterfront view), considered the duration
of the claimant’s deprivation of use, and his legal costs.
In De Sabla, the loss of property was evaluated on the basis of offers
made for the land.29
In the French Conseil d’Etat case referred to in Chapter 730 the State was
held liable – by national application of the European Convention of
Human Rights – for damages caused by unreasonable delays in judging
a claim under a public works contract. The court affirmed that the
claimant was entitled to reparations (beyond whatever he may have
recovered by virtue of the decision on the merits of his initial claim)
covering all ‘material and moral’ damages, in particular for ‘the loss of
an advantage or a chance’, for the belated recognition of a right, and
indeed for vexation (désagrément) ‘beyond the usual worries engendered by
any law suit’ in light of the plaintiff’s particular situation. (The plaintiff
was 72 years old when he brought his petition, the matter was deemed not
to be ‘particularly difficult’, and judgment was not rendered for seven and
a half years.)
Amco II and proximate cause
As described in the section of Chapter 7 entitled ‘Arbitrariness’, the Amco
II tribunal held that Indonesia committed a denial of justice when one
of its administrative agencies, the Capital Investment Coordinating
Board (or ‘BKPM’), revoked the claimants’ investment licence. This
gave rise to a debate of fundamental importance when it came to assessing
damages. Indonesia raised the issue how damages could follow even if the
record would support a finding by the international tribunal that the investors’
conduct justified revocation.
28
(1930) 24 AJIL 384.
De Sabla (US v. Panama), 29 June 1933, VI RIAA 358, at pp. 367–368.
30
Conseil d’Etat, Garde des sceaux, Ministre de la justice/M. Magiera, 28 June 2002.
29
218
Remedies and sanctions
The claimants insisted that the ‘procedurally unlawful revocation’ itself
should give rise to compensation ‘even if BKPM’s decision were substantively valid’. Indonesia argued that this could be so only if it were proved
that the procedural failure had led to an unlawful substantive decision. No
such proof could be given, so Indonesia argued, because the revocation
was in any event well founded. Moreover, the investor was given later
opportunities to seek revision of the revocation.31 Therefore the claim
must be rejected because ultimately the investors had not been denied
what Indonesia referred to as ‘substantial justice’, by which Indonesia
meant that the international tribunal could – and should – still determine
that the investors’ conduct justified cancellation of the licence.
The tribunal reviewed a number of Indonesian precedents invoked by
the parties. Eight of them are individually described in the award. The
arbitrators found that they did not ‘clearly stipulate whether a procedurally unlawful act per se generates compensation; or whether a decision
tainted by bad faith is necessarily unlawful’, although there was ‘some
slight authority’ that the answer ‘might be answered in the affirmative’.32
The inconclusiveness of Indonesian law led the arbitrators, pursuant to
Article 42 of the ICSID Convention, to appreciate the matter under
international law – a circumstance which naturally enhances the interest
of this precedent for the purposes of our study.
The tribunal then turned to a number of cases which have already
featured prominently in this book. The proposition for which Martini was
cited – that an arbitral tribunal may annul obligations imposed on a
foreigner by a national decision which violates international law, or
award monetary reparation – did not, in the Amco II tribunal’s view,
address the issue at hand. As for Fabiani, it demonstrated that damages
may flow if an unjust procedure causes loss, but the question was whether
damages would be available absent such loss. Similarly, the arbitrators
rejected the applicability of de Sabla, where the damages awarded could
not be said to represent compensation for procedural violations since they
flowed from the loss of property resulting from the defective procedures.
31
This Indonesian defence is given very little attention in the award. It is difficult to avoid
the impression that the arbitrators overlooked the point encapsulated by Judge
Jiménez de Aréchaga when he wrote that: ‘an essential condition of a State being
held responsible for a judicial decision in breach of municipal law is that the decision
must be a decision of a court of last resort, all remedies having been exhausted’.
‘International Law in the Past Third of a Century’, (1978) 159 Recueil des cours, vol. I,
278, at p. 282. This aspect of denial of justice is of course at the heart of Chapter 5.
32
Amco II at para. 121.
219
Denial of Justice in International Law
And while Idler declared Venezuelan judgments to be a nullity due to a
denial of justice (in particular lack of proper notice), the award in that case
did not consider whether those judgments might have been substantively
correct. In the same way, Chattin made no supposition about substantive
guilt or otherwise; damages were awarded, in the words of the commission which decided that case, because of the ‘most astonishing lack of
seriousness on the part of the Court’. Smith v. Marianao involved a wrongful expropriation, with the consequence that damages were to be awarded
in the event the property was not restored.
For its part, Indonesia argued that some judgments of the European
Court of Human Rights suggest that ‘procedural violations do not generate damages where there remains the possibility that the substantive
decision might be the same’.33 The arbitrators were not convinced, noting
that there is ‘a discrete jurisprudence relating to Article 50 of the
European Convention that has no applicability to the issue in this case’.34
Having concluded its review of the international legal authorities
invoked by the disputants, the Amco II tribunal concluded that ‘the question in international law is not whether procedural irregularities generate
damages per se. Rather, the international law test is whether there has been
a denial of justice . . . as Commissioner Nielson reminded in the McCurdy
case, even if no single act constitutes a denial of justice, such denial of
justice can result from ‘‘a combination of improper acts’’.’ The arbitrators
referred to the ELSI case, which had just been decided by the ICJ, and its
distinction ‘between unlawfulness in municipal law’ and ‘arbitrariness
under international law’. This distinction, the arbitrators wrote, is
‘equally germane to the distinction between procedural unlawfulness
and a denial of justice’.35
33
Ibid. at para. 125.
Ibid. at para. 128. Article 50 requires ‘just compensation’ to be given by the European
Court if the reparation permitted by local law is incomplete. It must be said that the
Amco II Tribunal’s treatment of the Sramek v. Austria, 22 October 1984, [1984] ECHR
12, seems unduly dismissive. To conclude that it does not support Indonesia’s claim,
the arbitrators noted that the applicant in Sramek had not sought the Austrian courts to
compensate her for the procedural wrong (irregular composition of the tribunal), but
for consequential pecuniary loss; at para. 127. But the issue was not what Sramek had
sought from the Austrian courts. It was rather what one should make of the European
Court’s observation that ‘the evidence in the file does not warrant the conclusion that
had it been differently composed [the tribunal] would have arrived at a decision in Mrs
Sramek’s favour’.
35
Amco II at para. 136.
34
220
Remedies and sanctions
This analysis led the arbitrators to consider whether the circumstances
of their case amounted to a denial of justice regardless of the existence of
substantive grounds justifying the revocation of the licence. They concluded that although ‘certain’ grounds of that nature ‘might have existed’,
the ‘circumstances surrounding BKPM’s decision make it unlawful’, and
gave rise to Indonesia’s liability.
The Amco II tribunal’s review of the precedents cogently demonstrated
that the authorities relied on by the parties did not in fact answer the
question as framed: does international law consider that damages should
be awarded solely on account of a denial of justice even if it can be
demonstrated that the substantive outcome would have been justified
even without the violation of due process? But having done so, the critical
reader might well reflect, the Amco II tribunal does not appear to have
answered the question either. What the arbitrators rather did is to affirm
that there was a distinction between ‘procedural unlawfulness’ and ‘denial
of justice’, and that in the case before them a finding of the latter under
international law (in addition to the former, under local law) was justified.
Having so concluded, the tribunal explicitly stated that it was not required
‘to address the issue of whether Amco fulfilled its investment obligation’,36
and that it need not make legal findings of law as to whether an administrative decision may be ‘substantively justifiable’ by reference to grounds
not cited in the decision – and this precisely ‘because of its determination
that BKPM’s substantive decision was irrevocably tainted by bad faith’.37
The unstated premise appears to be that if there has been an international
delict, reparations are due. But that of course is not what international law
affirms; Chorzów Factory is trite law to the effect that in the wake of a breach
the damages caused must be repaired. And so the question remains: what
are the damages if the outcome would have been the same even if the
national authorities had acted properly?
The award says that the acts imputed to Indonesia were unlawful even
though ‘certain substantive grounds might have existed for the revocation
of the licence’.38 But the issue at this juncture is not the unlawfulness of the
conduct, but whether it caused proximate damage. Nor is the reader
assisted by the tantalising statement that there are ‘indications’ that the
circumstances of the revocation ‘tainted the proceedings irrevocably’.
The acknowledgement of ‘indications’ sound like something short of a
finding. More importantly, the notion of irrevocability is quite unhelpful. If it
is taken to mean that the harm caused to the investor was irretrievable,
36
Ibid. at para. 141.
37
Ibid. at para. 143.
221
38
Ibid. at para. 139.
Denial of Justice in International Law
there is a contradiction with the observation that the revocation might
have been well founded. If it is taken to mean that the defect could not be
corrected by an appellate mechanism, one would search in vain in
the award for an examination of that proposition.39 Or if it is taken to
mean only that the conclusion is incontrovertible, the use of the word
seems inapt.
In the section of its award dealing with issues of quantum, the Amco II
tribunal began with the postulate that ‘BKPM’s decision . . . caused PT
Amco to lose its licence to engage in business ventures in Indonesia’ and
proceeded without pause to assess the value of what the investors thus had
lost. Surely this was going too fast. The words just quoted indicate that the
consequence of the delict was something very concrete: the loss of the
right to do business. But what had caused the arbitrators to conclude that
the Martini, Fabiani, de Sabla and Smith v. Marianao awards did not ‘address
the problems before this Tribunal’ was precisely that they sought to repair the
consequences of the international delict rather than to consider whether
the delict per se gave rise to a duty to compensate. And if the investor’s own
conduct might have justified revocation of the licence if that issue had
been examined properly – i.e. with proper notice and a right to be heard –
how can one think that the BKPM’s decision ‘irrevocably’ caused the
investors to lose their rights to do business?
The Tribunal’s answer to this question was as follows:
To argue, as did Indonesia, that although there had been procedural irregularities, a ‘fair BKPM’ would still have revoked the licence, because of Amco’s own
shortcomings, is to misaddress causality. The Tribunal cannot pronounce upon
what a ‘fair BKPM’ would have done. This is both speculative, and not the issue
before it. Rather, it is required to characterise the acts that BKPM did engage in
and to see if those acts, if unlawful, caused damage to Amco. It is not required to
see if, had it acted fairly, harm might then have rather been attributed to Amco’s
own fault. 40
Since BKPM’s denial of justice effectively deprived the investors of their
contract rights (the rescission of the lease and management agreement
was chiefly based on the impossibility to carry it out without the licence)
‘non-speculative profits under that contract are recoverable’,41 the
39
To the contrary, para. 152 mentions parenthetically that the Indonesian Supreme
Court ‘was not acted’ to invalidate the revocation of the investment licence when it
rejected the appeal against the decision that the lease and management agreement
pertaining to the hotel had been validly rescinded.
40
Ibid. at para. 174. 41 Ibid. at para. 178.
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Remedies and sanctions
objective being ‘to put Amco in the position it would have been in had the
contract been performed’. This was evaluated according to a discounted
cashflow method which both parties acknowledged as appropriate in
principle – although naturally with a debate about assumptions and
relevant data which is familiar in international arbitration, and is of no
particular interest for our subject.
By contrast to Amco II, in Lauder v. Czech Republic the arbitral tribunal
explicitly held that the respondent state ‘took a discriminatory and
arbitrary measure’ against the investor when the official Media Council,
after having accepted that he make a direct investment in a Czech entity
(CET21) which held a valuable television licence, changed its mind as a
result of political opposition ‘to the granting of the licence to an entity
with significant foreign capital’.42 Lauder therefore had to invest in a new
company which would have ‘exclusive use’ of the licence. The measure
was arbitrary, said the tribunal, ‘because it was not founded on reason
or fact, nor on the law which expressly accepted ‘applications from
companies with foreign equity participation’, but on mere fear reflecting national preference’.43 The tribunal then went on to address
the issue of relevance here, namely whether the breach led to damage.
It held:
It is most probable that if in 1993 Mr. Lauder’s investment in the Czech television
could have been made directly in CET 21, the Licence holder, the possible breach
of any exclusive agreements in 1999 could not have occurred in the way it did.
Even if the breach therefore constitutes one of several ‘sine qua non’ acts, this alone is
not sufficient. In order to come to a finding of a compensable damage it is also
necessary that there existed no intervening cause for the damage . . .
The arbitrary and discriminatory breach by the Respondent of its Treaty
obligations constituted a violation of the Treaty. The alleged harm was, however,
caused in 1999 by the acts of CET 21, controlled by Mr. Železný. The 1993
breach of the Treaty was too remote to qualify as a relevant cause for the harm
caused. A finding of damages due to the Claimant by the Respondent would
therefore not be appropriate.44
42
Award, 13 September 2001, 9 ICSID Reports [forthcoming] (Cutler, Klein, Briner
(presiding)) at para. 231.
43
Ibid. at para. 232.
44
Ibid. at paras. 234–235. (The tribunal in CME Czech Republic BV v. Czech Republic partial
award, 13 September 2001, 9 ICSID Reports [forthcoming] (Schwebel, Hándl, Kühn
(presiding) reached a sharply different conclusion as to the facts of the case.)
223
Denial of Justice in International Law
If one goes back to a locus classicus of international law, the Chorzów
Factory case,45 one finds that the court identified three fundamental questions presented in this logical sequence:
(1)
(2)
(3)
The existence of the obligation to make reparation.
The existence of the damage which must serve as a basis for the
calculation of the amount of the indemnity.
The extent of this damage.46
The PCIJ rephrased its second question somewhat more simply as,
‘whether damage has resulted from the wrongful act’. If that is the
question, did the Amco II tribunal elide it? The authorities to the effect
that this question must be confronted are too numerous to mention.
As examples, consider the German – US Mixed Claims Commission’s
statement in 1923 that proximate cause is ‘a rule of general application
both in private and public law’;47 the ELSI case, so clearly in the minds of
the Amco II arbitrators, where the US claim was rejected because of its
failure to establish that the offending acts of the Italian Government were
the proximate cause of the relevant losses – rather than ‘ELSI’s headlong
course to insolvency’;48 and the posture of the plenary Iran – US Claims
Tribunal when it found a ‘failure’ by the US but reserved for a later stage
the determination, ‘whether Iran has established that it has suffered a loss
as a proximate result’ thereof.49
But the PCIJ also said, in an oft-quoted phrase, that ‘it is a principle of
international law, and even a general conception of law, that any breach
of an engagement involves an obligation to make reparation’. It did not
qualify this statement by adding provided damages are proved. We are thus
impelled to look closer at step (2) above: ‘the existence of the damage
which must serve as a basis for the calculation’. Might it not be said that
the damage ‘which must serve as a basis’ is determined by the pleadings,
and that the identification of the damages to be proved may therefore be
the consequence of the submissions of the claiming party? Some intimations of such a notion transpire from this passage of the judgment:
45
Germany v. Poland (1928) PCIJ, Series A, No. 17. This was the famous Judgment 13 of
the Court, which had in fact been preceded by four other judgments (Nos. 6, 7, 8 and 9)
in the same case.
46
Ibid. at p. 29.
47
Administrative Decision No. II (US v. Germany), 1 November 1923, VII RIAA 23, at p. 29.
48
Case concerning Elettronica Sicula SpA (ELSI) (US v. Italy) 1989 ICJ Reports 15, at para. 101.
49
Iran v. US, Case No. A11, 597-A11-FT, award, 7 April 2000, at para. 291.
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Remedies and sanctions
The Applicant having calculated the amount of the reparation claimed on
the basis of the damage suffered by the two Companies as a result of the Polish
Government’s attitude, it is necessary for the Court to ascertain whether these
Companies have in fact suffered damage as a consequence of that attitude.50
This was of course a claim by espousal. Germany had chosen to present a
claim aimed at recovering the pecuniary loss of its nationals. That being
the plea, it had to be proved. (And so it was.) But as we have seen,
international law has also embraced the concept of deterrence, as in the
Sartori case where an indemnity was granted to the claimant ‘on the
principle that reparation ought to be made in cases where responsibility
is incurred, however small it may be . . . in order that each government
may place entire confidence in the good faith of the other’.51 Was this the
unarticulated premise of Amco II, that the claimant acted as a private
prosecutor whose recovery served the broader interests of international
law,52 and as such dispensed from proving proximate cause? Or should
the award be read as standing for the proposition that the state gets one
clear chance at providing justice to the foreigner, failing which the
international tribunal should not speculate about the outcome if national
processes had been proper?
If a foreigner’s claim before a national court was thwarted by a
denial of justice, the prejudice often falls to be analysed as the loss of a
chance – the possibility, not the certainty, of prevailing at trial and on
appeal, and of securing effective enforcement against a potential judgment debtor whose credit-worthiness may be open to doubt. The questions left open by Amco II suggest that this dimension of the inquiry was
overlooked.
At any rate, the observation must be made that a Leitmotif of our study
courses into this chapter too; there is no magic of drafting, no improvement of legislative technique, that can allow the international legal
process to dispense with the need for the judicial qualities of discernment
in the light of experience, applied to the circumstances of each case.
50
Chorzów Factory case (Germany v. Poland), (1928) PCIJ, Series A, No. 17, at p. 30.
US v. Peru, Moore, Arbitrations 3120, at p. 3123.
52
De Visscher wrote at 414–415 that awards in favour of individuals ‘in reality
correspond to a social necessity . . . the objective being to create an incentive for the
defaulting government to ameliorate its judicial organisation, while giving the claiming
government some assurance that such facts will not arise again in the future’.
51
225
Denial of Justice in International Law
The time value of money
Given the lengthy delays that tend to bedevil so many legal systems, it is
clear that the issue of whether interest runs on the amounts found to
represent the compensable loss takes on a special importance in the
context of denial of justice. We have already considered the extreme
Idler case, where the dispute festered for seventy years.53
Far more recently, the European Court of Human Rights – not known
for generous awards to claimants – recognised that ‘the adequacy of the
compensation would be diminished’54 unless consideration were given to
the fact that ten years had elapsed since the claimant had obtained an
arbitral award against the Government of Greece only to be frustrated by
a new law which purported to annul the award (see the section on
‘Targeted legislation’ in Chapter 6). It therefore granted interest, even
though the arbitral award – which involved a substantial amount of
money – had not stipulated that interest would run until payment. This
realism must be approved.
Summary
The goal of reparations in international law is to restore the victim of a
breach to the position it would have enjoyed if the infraction had not
occurred. That general principle applies to cases of denial of justice.
Although the formulation of the principle is uncontroversial, its concrete application raises considerable difficulties. It is not always easy to
determine what the hypothetical consequences would have been if denial
of justice had not occurred.
If the complainant has been deprived of a right or caused to make
payment, the situation is relatively straightforward. Since this international wrong requires the failure of the national system as a whole, the
finding of denial of justice necessarily means that there was no further
local recourse. The rights must then be restored (if restitution is available
and sufficient) or monetary reparation awarded.
The difficulties arise when the complainant was thwarted from pursuing
or defending a claim. After all, if his case had been given a fair hearing, it may
have been a poor one in any event. Similarly, the denial of justice may
53
54
Jacob Idler v. Venezuela, Moore, Arbitrations at p. 3491.
Stran Greek Refineries and Stratis Andreadis v. Greece, 9 December 1994, (1995) 19 EHRR
293, at para. 82.
226
Remedies and sanctions
have occurred at the national appellate level, as the complainant sought
to overturn an unfavourable first judgment. The appeal may have had
little chance of success even in the absence of the denial of justice. What
does it then mean to put the complainant in the ‘same situation’? The
inquiry may be further complicated by the fact that the victim, as in
Loewen, decided in the circumstances to compromise, and thereafter asks
the international tribunal to give compensation for the shortfall on the
footing that the unfavourable settlement was unavoidable due to the
denial of justice.
It seems difficult to justify the conclusion that the prejudice to a
claimant who was prevented from having his grievance heard should be
deemed equal to whatever relief he had initially seen fit to ask. In establishing an amount so that it corresponds to what the international tribunal
feels was the true loss, it may be necessary to evaluate probabilities of the
outcome if the local system had proceeded in accordance with its laws but
without violating international law.
The notion that no international wrong must go unpunished is arguably inconsistent with Chorzów if its consequence is that it leads to recovery
even in the absence of demonstrable prejudice. Such recovery could only
be viewed as a penalty in the interest of the international rule of law.
227
9
The menace of ‘obscure arbiters’?
We have concluded our efforts to situate denial of justice in modern
international law. The book could be closed already. The reflections to
be offered in this final chapter are, strictly speaking, hors sujet. There will
be no further analysis, no illuminating synthesis. What remains are
thoughts inspired by sidelong glances.
At the heart of this post scriptum is the simple point that the adjudication of
claims of denial of justice tends to be a matter of considerable sensitivity. Our
subject therefore gives rise to a formidable test of commitment to the rule of
international law. True, the same can be said for the way national constituencies receive any international decision unfavourable to national interests. In
that sense, a finding by international adjudicators that a state is guilty of
denial of justice may encounter the same type of resistance as that which
often confronts foreign arbitral awards arising from ordinary private commercial transactions. Yet there is something exceptionally emotive about
challenges to national justice. They seem to strike at the heart of national
pride. And so it seems difficult to leave the subject without considering the
policy implications of international adjudications relating to this delict.
Anti-international challenges
As the case of Loewen v. United States drew to a close, a regional US newspaper quoted critics of free trade agreements as raising the ‘subtle issue’
whether a ‘secret tribunal’ of ‘obscure arbiters’ should be in a position to
‘trample the voice of the people’.1 The epithet – obscure arbiters – is
1
Stewart Yerton, ‘Critics Say Agreement Tramples the Rights of Local Citizens’, The
New Orleans Times Picayune, 30 June 2003.
228
The menace of ‘obscure arbiters’?
pejorative but meaningless. Nor need anyone fear that international arbitrators will exceed the bounds of their jurisdiction. If they do, their decisions
are quashed – by annulment if the case is heard under the aegis of ICSID,
otherwise by national courts.2
The serious question is whether they represent some form of danger
even when they do respect the terms of their mandate. Have they been
given licence to subvert the popular will, or to work against the public
good? The evocation of anonymous cabals, however exaggerated, justifies
an exploration of the scope of the duty and authority of international
arbitrators.
When international tribunals pass judgment on national institutions,
indignant reactions are predictable. They escape the confines of diplomatic discourse and erupt into the realm of public debate, producing
much rhetoric but less informed judgment.
For there to be a denial of justice under international law, an international tribunal must find that the legal system of a country has performed
badly, so badly that it falls short of international minimum standards.
People everywhere vigorously criticise their own courts, but resent it
when foreigners do; hence the outbursts against imagined ‘obscure’ villains. One doubts that the author of the philippics quoted above would
have been appeased if Sir Anthony Mason, the former president of the
highest court of Australia who chaired the Loewen tribunal, had been
replaced by a celebrity lawyer. The logical inference from this type of
criticism is rather that international legal claims against a state should be
resolved by politicians accountable to the electorate of that state. In other
words, the objection is not only a negation of the judicial process, but a
rejection of the principle that a state may be held accountable under
international law.
That acute sensibilities come to the fore when national justice is challenged by foreign prosecutors before international tribunals is neither surprising nor new. In the economic sphere – where the predominant issues
concern the protection of property rights – the nationalistic reactions once
tended to be those of Third World countries. Capital-exporting nations like
the United States, on the other hand, staunchly promoted the international
rule of law, and in particular the authority of international tribunals to pass
judgment on the actions of national authorities, including courts.
2
As in Metalclad (Supreme Court of British Columbia, judgment of 2 May 2001, 5 ICSID
Reports 236) and Attorney-General of Canada v. S.D. Myers, Inc., Federal Court of Canada,
judgment of 13 January 2004, 8 ICSID Reports 194.
229
Denial of Justice in International Law
At the turn of the century, a volte-face in the US became perceptible in
the attitudes of a number of officials, pressure groups and media, as the
conduct of US organs of government came repeatedly before the bar of
international law, almost entirely as a result of the application of the
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
In a much-remarked article,3 Guillermo Aguilar Alvarez and William
Park likened the new US attitude to that of a protagonist in Jules
Romains’ Les hommes de bonne volonté, who was happy to break the law
but incensed that others did so as well: c’est un homme qui aime l’honnêteté
d’autrui (a man who likes honesty in others). Aguilar and Park noted the
extraordinary public outbursts of US Congressmen who in the course of a
single session:
*
*
*
fulminated against the possibility that the Justice Department might
have to sue the State of Mississippi to enforce a hypothetical award in
favour of Loewen: ‘This is nuts! . . . We must stand together to
protect the sovereignty of American laws. We should not allow
[that] American taxpayer dollars pay American lawyers to help a
foreign corporation fight American state laws in court’.4
expressed anxiety that the pace of globalisation might result in ‘sacrificing state and local laws at the altar of ill-defined international
investor rights’.5
yielded to the temptation of facile polemics: ‘The question . . . is very
clear: Should the rights of an investor come before the rights to enact
a chemical ban to prevent cancer?’6 and: ‘Are my colleagues to allow
families’ health and that of our children, our friends and neighbors to
be threatened because of foreign bureaucrats!’7
All of these sentiments were expressed in support of legislation in 19998
that would have prohibited the Department of Justice from using its
budget to challenge state laws that violate NAFTA – of which, as
Aguilar and Park pointed out, the Mississippi bond requirement (under
3
‘The New Face of Investment Arbitration: Capital Exporters as Host States under
NAFTA Chapter 11’, ICCA Congress Series No. 11, 302; republished with
amendments as ‘The New Face of Investment Arbitration: NAFTA Chapter 11’,
(2003) 28 Yale Journal of International Law 365.
4
Shows (Mississippi), 145 Congressional Record H7368 (5 August 1999).
5
Tierney (Massachusetts), ibid. 6 Bonior (Michigan), ibid.
7
Ros-Lehtinen (Florida), ibid. at p. H7370.
8
The Kucinich–Ros-Lehtinen amendment, discussed and defeated by vote on 5 August
1999, ibid.
230
The menace of ‘obscure arbiters’?
which the Loewen Corporation was given ten days to provide security in
the amount of US$625 million) might be an example. The proposal
failed, but by a scant margin: 196 in favour, 226 opposed.
Attacks from other sources were yet more excessive. Public Citizen, an
organisation founded by Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate and environmentalist, took out full-page advertisements captioned ‘Secret Courts
for Corporations’ and ‘Taxpayer Dollars for Foreign Polluters’. They
castigated NAFTA for enabling ‘foreign corporations to sue the federal
government in secret tribunals, demanding our tax dollars as payment for
complying with US health, safety and pollution laws’. The World Wildlife
Fund and the Institute for Sustainable Development sponsored and
disseminated a report by a Canadian lawyer concluding that NAFTA
Chapter 11 arbitrations are ‘one-sided’, lack ‘transparency’, and are
‘shockingly unsuited to the task of balancing private rights against public
goods’.9 A journalist of national reputation, Bill Moyers, appearing on the
ostensibly dispassionate Public Broadcasting Service, introduced one of
his programmes by evoking ‘a threat to democracy from an obscure
provision of the North American Free Trade Agreement . . . how is it
that foreign corporations can trump health and safety laws in our own
country?’ That ‘obscure provision’, it turned out, was nothing other than
NAFTA’s Chapter 11, the investment section, which Moyers described as
though it were a sinister incubator of ‘secret tribunals’. It turned out that
the immediate trigger for this segment of the programme was the Methanex
case.10 Guests invited to speak included a lawyer for the ‘Earthjustice
Legal Defense Fund’, which had lobbied for the ban of the petrol additive
MTBE; according to Methanex, a Canadian company, this ban constituted a discriminatory measure under NAFTA. In this gathering,
NAFTA was lambasted as a ‘sophisticated extortion racket’ and ‘an end
run around the Constitution’ in which ‘secret NAFTA tribunals can force
taxpayers to pay billions of dollars in lawsuits’. Democracy, it was said,
‘goes out the window’.11
9
Howard Mann, Private Rights, Public Problems: A Guide to NAFTA’s Controversial Chapter on
Investor Rights (New Providence, NI: International Institute for Sustainable
Development and World Wildlife Fund, BPR Publishers, 2001), at p. 46.
10
Methanex Corp. v. United States of America, partial award, 7 August 2002, 7 ICSID Reports
239 (Rowley, Christopher, Veeder (presiding)); hearings on the merits 7–17 June 2004
(with Professor W. Michael Reisman replacing Mr Christopher following the latter’s
resignation).
11
Now with Bill Moyers, 2 January 2002, transcript available at <http://www.pbs.org/
now/transcript/transcript_tdfull.html>.
231
Denial of Justice in International Law
Responses to the anti-international critiques
There are of course serious controversies about the macroeconomic
dislocations created by globalising policies in general and NAFTA in
particular, relating for example to the scope and timing of tariff reductions, the need to retrain workers and farmers displaced by international
competition, and the tradeoffs between declines in employment rates in
some sectors against increases elsewhere. Such political issues are the
substance of governmental policy; the raison d’être of a reliable legal infrastructure is purely instrumental. To be sure, using a good tool to implement misguided policies leads to poor results, but that is no reason to
blame the tool. The point becomes obvious when one considers that the
absence of mechanisms for implementation will inevitably frustrate the
soundest and most democratic of policies.
There is more than one paradox in the kinds of denunciations
described above. The multilateralist impulse from the left of the political
spectrum, so vibrant when it comes to the Kyoto Protocol on transnational environmental protection, to the curtailment of the death penalty,
or to the promotion of any number of laudable mechanisms for the
protection of human rights, seems to evaporate when it comes to protection of property rights.12 But when the outbursts come from the right, one
cannot help but think that those who were aghast at the prospect of an
international tribunal ‘trampling on sovereignty’ by condemning the
Mississippi court’s miscarriage of justice in Loewen would find nothing
amiss if precisely such a sanction had been pronounced against precisely
such a miscarriage of justice in a Third World country. That, one would
imagine them saying, is precisely what international arbitration was
designed to do.
The neonationalist reaction nevertheless deserves serious attention, not
so much because it has merit, but because it puts into relief choices that
12
History, it may be said, teaches that when leaders can do with private property as they
please, they tend to engineer systems of incentive and disincentive that make all other
human rights illusory. It is perhaps fitting that a much-discussed book-length treatment
of this subject was authored by a noted historian of Russia, Richard Pipes, Property and
Freedom (London: The Harvill Press, 1999).
The relationship between property rights and the fight against poverty was a key to
The Mystery of Capital (New York: Basic Books, 2000), a book-length essay by the
Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, a member of the International Labor
Organization’s World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization and
the promoter of the much-heralded effort in the 1990s to alleviate the bureaucratic
obstacles to the recognition of rights created within Peru’s vast informal economy.
232
The menace of ‘obscure arbiters’?
are fundamental to the international legal order. As with the inherently
difficult concept of democratic rule, the tradeoffs must be understood and
weighed and debated continuously. Perhaps the US Congress, or the
legislature of the State of Mississippi, knows what is best for the public,
and for the environment, and should not have to comply with international law; but if national authorities act on such impulses they should
comprehend that they are undermining the international rule of law. For
it is the very essence of international law that it limits national sovereignty.
It is a social contract, and requires careful consideration of long-term
interests. We all like to do as we please, whenever we please. But we are
not prepared to allow others that privilege. When we surrender to the
discipline of general norms, therefore, we do so only because otherwise
there is little prospect that others will voluntarily yield their own sovereignty. The stakes are high. If the politicians of one country insist that
international tribunals should have no power to rule on the legality of
economic discrimination against foreigners because the protection of
local business interests is essential, and coincides with the welfare
of the local community, their posture may be practically undistinguishable
from that of leaders in other countries who might insist that
international tribunals should have no power to rule on the legality of
the curtailment of civil rights because such restrictions reflect the local
conception of the will of God, or a local cultural attachment to traditional
authoritarian rule.
The neonationalist currents seem most persuasive to those who are
attracted by sensational allegations of conspiracies against the public
interest, and are disinclined to make an effort to grasp the more complex
themes of international rules and economic cooperation. The shrill voices
will always be with us. They are an inevitable part of democratic debate.
It would be our loss if they fell silent; they provide valuable occasions to
articulate rational rebuttals of the extreme positions which underlie
appeals to public prejudice.
Yet political maturity requires that propaganda be recognised as such.
The open-minded search for policies that contribute to long-term benefits
for the community as a whole – national, regional, international – is the
nutrient of a healthy democratic diet. Not so propaganda, whose authors
pursue an ultimate revealed truth, and care little about the means of
advancing their cause. They have no time for inconvenient facts. Servants
of their revelation, they are dismissive of what Arthur Koestler called
penultimate truths. As the discredited Rubashov, the principal character
of Darkness at Noon, rues in his prison cell, true believers consider that
233
Denial of Justice in International Law
‘the question of subjective good faith is of no interest . . . History has
taught us that often lies serve her better than the truth.’
Ultimate revelations are of infinite variety. They may be as simple as
the postulate that anything that endangers a dictatorial regime is to be
combated at any cost. So, for example, inquiries by the Inter-American
Commission of Human Rights as to the enslavement of local courts by the
executive branch might be dismissed as an insulting infringement of
national sovereignty, and the investigations by international criminal
courts of the cover-up of genocide castigated as the handiwork of imperialist conspirators.
One need only recall the reaction of the Fujimori Government when
Ivcher Bronstein brought proceedings against Peru before the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights.13 A naturalised Peruvian citizen,
Bronstein was the majority shareholder and director of a television station
which had become a thorn in the side of the regime, exposing human
rights violations and corrupt practices by Vladimir Montesinos, the
infamous power broker behind the throne. The government abruptly
‘withdrew’ Bronstein’s citizenship, with the result that he was no longer
qualified to own and operate a local broadcasting company; he was in
effect silenced and dispossessed. Roughly at the same time, three Peruvian
Constitutional Court justices initiated proceedings before the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights, contending that they had been
impeached because they refused to uphold the constitutionality of a law
intended to allow Fujimori to run for an additional presidential term.14 In
July 1999, Peru purported to withdraw its recognition of the jurisdiction
of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. (The Court held it to be
ineffective; post-Fujimori, Peru has reaffirmed its subjection to the jurisdiction of the Court.15)
In the course of this episode, Fujimori had continued to make eloquent
speeches about the crucial role of an independent judiciary to the building
of a democratic and prosperous nation. As for various exceptions to due
process, he said:
13
Ivcher Bronstein v. Peru (Merits), 6 February 2001, Inter-American Court of Human
Rights, Series C, No. 74.
14
Constitutional Court case (Aguirre Roca, Rey Terry, and Revoredo Marsano v. Peru (Merits)),
31 January 2001, Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Series C, No. 71.
15
Jo M. Pasqualucci, The Practice and Procedure of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
(Cambridge University Press, 2003), at pp. 115–116.
234
The menace of ‘obscure arbiters’?
No se trata de quebrar el Estado de Derecho, sino de adecuarlo a circunstancias de emergencia.
(We are not toppling the State of Law, but rather adjusting it to circumstances of
emergency.)
That was his way of saying: we will run our courts our way. As for the
Inter-American Court of Human Rights, he left it to the Chairman of the
parliamentary Judicial Commission to say that Peru would not bow to a
Court – and now the inevitable phrase – ‘whose conduct has obviously
become politicised’. Various members and spokesmen of the Fujimori
Government referred to the Judges of the Inter-American Court as viejos
decrépitos, izquierdistas infiltrados, and abogados y voceros del terrorismo.16 On one
occasion Fujimori himself indulged in legal analysis: orders by an international court to conduct new trials were unconstitutional, he ventured,
because of the rule of res judicata.17
A similar example was furnished by the ad hominem diatribes directed by
Nigeria against three of the leading international jurists of their generation immediately following the judgment in Land and Maritime Boundary
Between Cameroon and Nigeria.18 They were accused of ‘legitimising and
promoting the interests of former colonial powers at our expense’, solely
by virtue of their having the nationalities of European former colonial
16
In response, a Peruvian human rights activist referred to the rather conventional
curricula vitae of the distinguished Judges to demonstrate the surrealism of describing
them as ‘aging and decrepit leftist infiltrators, lawyers and spokesmen of terrorism’.
Javier Diez Cansero, ‘Fujimori y el Sistema Interamericano de Derechos Humanos:
Crónica geisha de una sesión histórica’, 13 July 1999, available online at the website of
the Peruvian Asociación Por Derechos Humanos, <http://www.aprodeh.org.pe/
public/ciddhh.c_july23.htm>.
17
Consciously or not, he thus echoed a dusty ‘advisory opinion’ rendered by the Peruvian
Supreme Court in 1927 in the case of Cantero-Herrera v. Canevaro Co., in which Cuban
claims of denial of justice before Peruvian courts were met with the Supreme Court’s
nationalistic assertion that res judicata has been ‘raised to the category of international
law’ in that ‘no self-respecting country will countenance that any other country should
impeach the force and legality of an executed judgment’. The episode is described by
Freeman at p. 128 et seq., who dismissed this primitive attempt to ‘transplant into the
international community a generally accepted principle of municipal law as a means of
barring claims founded in distinct international wrongs’, at p. 129.
Fujimori’s posture had even earlier antecedents. As noted in correspondence from the
US Secretary of State to his Minister in Peru on 1 November 1886, Peru expressed its
willingness to accept international adjudication of claims by US citizens provided that
any treaty to that effect would exclude ‘all claims upon which judgment may have been
pronounced by Peruvian tribunals’. The US position was straightforward: ‘Such
judgments are not recognised by international law as internationally binding, and
cannot be so regarded by this government.’ J.B. Moore, A Digest of International Law
(8 vols., Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1906), vol. VI, at p. 267.
18
Cameroon v. Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea intervening, 2002 ICJ Reports 3.
235
Denial of Justice in International Law
powers.19 Whatever the ‘logic’ of the proposition that a decision favourable to Cameroon was the product of neocolonialism, it must also be
recognised as insulting to a fellow African state. The Nigerian statement
went on to declare that the government would act in compliance with ‘its
constitutional commitment to protect its citizenry’, a clear challenge to
the authority of the court’s judgment.
Not all true believers have a political agenda. Some are defenders of
local culture, or religious traditions, against the onslaughts of the modern
world. In The Last Temptation of Christ case before the Inter-American
Court of Human Rights, involving censorship of a motion picture,
Chilean church groups seeking to intervene as amici curiae in favour of
the ban explained that they acted ‘in the name of Jesus Christ, the
Catholic Church and themselves’.20 It would be a mistake to underestimate the fervour of such beliefs. How can those who hold them be
expected to hesitate, if they see the choice as being between the abstract
and distant benefits of the international rule of law and the imperative
need to stop the devil from corrupting the hearts and minds of the
children of the faithful?
To move to the economic field, the revelations fuelling antiinternationalist rhetoric may be a priori convictions that anything is evil
if it is perceived as either favourable or disadvantageous to business, or if it
does not give an attractive forum for single-issue pressure groups.
Dialogue is pointless; no evidence is admissible if it does not conform to
the ultimate truth. Illustrations abound whenever international bodies
purport to regulate trade, whether at a regional or global level. Thus, to
take but one example among legion, pending a decision by the WTO
Appellate Body regarding the licitness of US steel tariffs, the Chairman of
the American Iron and Steel Institute told the US Congressional Steel
Caucuses that:
The WTO’s abuse of power and infringement of U.S. sovereignty will undermine
the international rules-based trading system if Congress does not push back.21
19
Official statement issued by the Nigeria Information Service Centre, 7 November
2002, available online at <http://www.nigeriaembassyusa.org/110802_1.shtml>.
Fortunately for regional peace, Nigeria ultimately reconsidered and seemed to accept
the inevitable consequences of the judgment.
20
Olmedo Bustos et al. v. Chile (Merits), 5 February 2001, Inter-American Court of Human
Rights, Series C, No. 73, at para. 21.
21
Remarks of Daniel R. DiMicco, ASIS Press Release, 8 April 2003, available online
at <http://www.steel.org/news/pr/2003/pr030408.html>. In fact, the Appellate
Body’s decision went against the US Government, but was complied with, prompting
236
The menace of ‘obscure arbiters’?
Fortunately, cooler heads tend to prevail; untruths and exaggerations
are examined and exposed.
One such distortion – and a particularly harmful one – is to view
international law as a conspiracy of foreign capitalists thwarting the
protection of public health, the environment and other unimpeachable
objectives. International tribunals obviously do not set out to curtail
national legislative prerogatives of seeking ways to prevent cancer, or
to give free rein to industrial polluters; they impose norms of nondiscrimination, or respect for other obligations of international law.
And the application of such norms does not mean that the international
tribunal substitutes its judgment for that of national authorities. To the
contrary, it gives effect to their own international agreements. Consider
this passage from Azinian v. Mexico:
The possibility of holding a State internationally liable for judicial decisions does
not, however, entitle a claimant to seek international review of the national court
decisions as though the international jurisdiction seised has plenary appellate
jurisdiction. This is not true generally, and it is not true of NAFTA. What must be
shown is that the court decision itself constitutes a violation of the treaty. Even if the
Claimants were to convince this Arbitral Tribunal that the Mexican courts
were wrong with respect to the invalidity of the Concession Contract, this
would not per se be conclusive as to a violation of NAFTA. More is required;
the Claimants must show either a denial of justice, or a pretence of form to
achieve an internationally unlawful end.22
This paragraph has been cited in other investment arbitration awards,
and always with approval. It has never been acknowledged by a US
Congressman, nor, it would seem, by a journalist. There is no foreign
bogeyman who wants to subvert democratic legislation. The issue is
rather this: when a government enters into an agreement under international law, is it subject to the processes of international law or can it
decide unilaterally how to comply with its undertakings?
But there are other readily exposed untruths, such as the allegation that
Chapter 11 was an insidious hidden feature of NAFTA, slipped in without
proper legislative awareness. Some things are so preposterous that they do
not even deserve to be ignored – so let it be said that NAFTA was the
a New York Times editorialist to opine that ‘this case was the rough equivalent of
Marbury v. Madison’, David Sanger, ‘Backing Down on Steel Tariffs, US Strengthens
Trade Group’, New York Times (5 December 2003), 25, quoted in James Bacchus,
Freedom and Trade (London: Cameron May 2004), at p. 296.
22
Robert Azinian et al. v. Mexico, award, 1 November 1999, 5 ICSID Reports 269, at para. 99
(emphasis in the original).
237
Denial of Justice in International Law
product of lengthy negotiations involving large teams of negotiators
representing each of the three governments; that it was not a routine bit
of legislation, but a highly visible treaty; and that the US Congress, for
one, is not a gathering of dupes lacking access to information and critical
analysis.
Almost as nonsensical is the proposition that international tribunals
comprise ‘unknown’ unelected decision-makers. Arbitral tribunals are
selected in accordance with the parties’ agreement. Disputants in investment arbitrations think very long and hard about their choice of arbitrators. They might not select celebrities, but persons they believe have the
requisite insight and impartiality to give proper effect to the international
instrument being invoked. Of course nothing stops the respondent state
from nominating well-known figures having held prominent positions of
public responsibility, and this has indeed occurred. Thus, for example,
the early NAFTA Tribunals included a former US Secretary of State, a
former Attorney General, and a former Congressman and federal judge.
The oft-repeated complaint that arbitral tribunals are ‘secret’ was
overcome, as we shall see, by successive measures that not only made
the process more transparent, but allowed representative interest groups
to make submissions to the international adjudicators. These measures
were met by grudging acquiescence. Like the man who will not take yes for
an answer, it seemed the critics were not satisfied that their concern was
addressed, but unhappy to be deprived of a grievance.
As for the sensationalist claim that ‘secret NAFTA tribunals can force
taxpayers to pay billions of dollars in lawsuits’ one can only wonder about
its foundation in fact.23 A noteworthy instance was the Pope & Talbot case,
23
Senator Kerry argued in the US Congress that it was necessary to curb treaty-based
investor protection by referring to a study which showed that ‘unless we change the
chapter 11 model, claims against the United States will average $32 billion annually’.
148 Congressional Record S4594 (21 May 2002). Senator Gramm of Texas retorted that
‘[i]n the 57 years that we have had investment treaties, never, ever has the United
States of America lost a case. But every day those same treaties protect American
investments in Central and South America, in Africa, in Asia, in the developing world,
in the very countries we say we want to see develop capitalist and democratic systems’
(ibid. at S4596). Gary H. Sampliner, a Senior Counsel in the Office of the General
Counsel for International Affairs of the US Department of Treasury put it as follows:
‘Like Sherlock Holmes’ proverbial dog that didn’t bark, the low number of NAFTA
claims filed to date, and the lower number of the successful ones, may be the most
eloquent testimony yet to the lack of a serious threat from the investor-state arbitration
provisions of US investment agreements’ (‘Arbitration of Expropriation Cases Under US
Investment Treaties – A Threat to Democracy or the Dog That Didn’t Bark?’ (2003) 18
ICSID Review 1, at p. 2).
238
The menace of ‘obscure arbiters’?
which was sufficiently controversial to cause the NAFTA Free Trade
Commission, headed by the Canadian Minister for International
Trade, the Mexican Secretary of the Economy, and the US Trade
Representative, whose interpretation of the treaty is explicitly binding
on tribunals deciding investment disputes, to issue an Interpretive Note24
purporting to direct arbitrators to adopt a particular, restrictive understanding of international minimum standards.25 Yet the final award
against Canada in that case amounted to barely US$460,000 – less
than what it cost the investor to prosecute its claim, and a thousand
times less than the original claim of US$508 million.26
The cooler heads that prevail are those of the representatives of the
relevant States. In their Joint Statement on the occasion of the tenth
anniversary of NAFTA, the three governments declared as follows:
The evidence is clear – the NAFTA has been a great success for all three Parties.
It is an outstanding demonstration of the rewards that flow to outward-looking,
confident countries that implement policies of trade liberalization as a way to
increase wealth, improve competitiveness and expand benefits to consumers,
workers and businesses. We remain committed to ensuring that the NAFTA
continues to help us to strengthen the North American economy through a rulesbased framework for doing business in an increasingly integrated market. Since
January 1, 1994, when the NAFTA entered into force, three-way trade amongst
It is of course unacceptable to take the position that ‘international law is fair only if we
always win’. There will inevitably be cases where the US Government will face
substantial exposure in serious cases that legitimately involve high stakes; Methanex v.
United States of America (7 ICSID Reports 208) may be an example. There were however no
protests from US legislators when a US investor won an award of US$354 million
against the Czech Republic, even though its government’s resources are incomparably
more modest than those of the US and even though the Czech authorities felt that they
had acted in pursuit of legitimate regulatory supervision of the television broadcasting
industry; CME Czech Republic BV v. Czech Republic, award on damages, 14 March 2003, 9
ICSID Reports [forthcoming].
24
NAFTA, Free Trade Commission, Chapter 11 Interpretation, 31 July 2001, 6 ICSID
Reports 367.
25
What happens if arbitrators find that the Free Trade Commission has engaged in
amendments to NAFTA rather than interpretations thereof remains controversial. (In the
former hypothesis, investors would doubtless raise estoppel arguments.) See the
much-remarked conclusion expressed in paragraph 47 on the final award in Pope &
Talbot Inc. v. Canada, award on damages, 31 May 2002, 7 ICSID Reports 148 (Greenberg,
Belman, Dervaird (presiding)): ‘[W]ere the Tribunal required to make a determination
whether the Commission’s action is an interpretation or an amendment, it would
choose the latter.’
26
On the other hand, Canada’s conduct was adjusted in the course of the proceedings in
light of rulings by the arbitral tribunal; that development might be considered as a form
of relief of some benefit to the claimant.
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Denial of Justice in International Law
our countries has reached over US$621 billion, more than double the preNAFTA level. Foreign Direct Investment by other NAFTA partners in our
three countries more than doubled to reach US$299.2 billion in 2000.27
This statement should be considered against the background that these
three democratic countries had known significant governmental changes
since NAFTA was negotiated. It is a permissible inference that the
national interests in maintaining NAFTA were sufficient to justify the
dismissal of dogmatic calls for its abolition.
The occasional costs of having offered international protection of
investors’ rights appear minuscule compared to the macroeconomic
effects of the treaty overall.28 If NAFTA has been successful in stimulating
trade and investment, it must be so because this complex treaty as a whole
has created effective incentives. And if the three governments had really
been involved in treason against national sovereignty, presumably their
electorates would have dismissed them.
As for the US complaints quoted above about the WTO’s treatment of
steel tariffs, it so happens that the president of the WTO Appellate Body
at the very time was a former US Congressman, James Bacchus. Before
he finished his mandate, he wrote this:
To anyone at all acquainted with the everyday reality of the WTO, the very
thought of the WTO as some kind of would-be ‘world government’ is laughable.
The WTO is not a government, and no one in any way involved with the WTO
has even the remotest desire to make it one. The WTO is an international
organization consisting of governments. It is a forum where governments agree by
consensus on rules to lower barriers to trade, and a way for governments to
ensure compliance with those rules when disputes arise about what they mean.29
Mr Bacchus put it more concretely as follows:
Contrary to some popular misconceptions, the WTO treaty is not a free trade
agreement. It does not mandate free trade. The WTO treaty is an international
27
NAFTA Free Trade Commission Joint Statement, ‘Celebrating NAFTA at Ten’,
7 October 2003, available online at <http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/nafta-alena/
statement-en.asp>.
28
And those costs should not be exaggerated in the first place. To quote the conclusion of
Sampliner’s study, ‘Arbitration of Expropriation Cases’, at p. 43: ‘while the future
direction of international regulatory takings jurisprudence in investor – state
arbitration is not free from doubt, the promise of enhancements to the global rule of
law appears far to outweigh the threats to legitimate sovereign prerogatives posed by
expropriation claims under this new form of dispute settlement’.
29
Bacchus, Trade, at p. 145.
240
The menace of ‘obscure arbiters’?
agreement for freeing trade and for preventing trade discrimination. It establishes a framework of rules that enables WTO Members to free trade by
making voluntary trade concessions on a multilateral basis, and it discourages
WTO Members from engaging in certain kinds of trade discrimination against
trading partners that are also Members of the WTO-based multilateral trading
system.30
What is significant is that so many states have made considerable efforts
to obtain membership in the WTO. They do not seek to withdraw from
membership. The important opinions are those of the representatives of
the relevant states.
The urgency of prudence
All human institutions are imperfect. There are, inevitably, grounds for
complaint. A series of questions arise. First, is the matter important
enough to mobilise attention and generate proposals for action?
Secondly, is the proper solution repair or replacement? Thirdly, are the
proposals being raised realistic? And fourthly, is there a risk of trading one
set of imperfections for another set of possibly greater ones?
The objectives of those who have suggested reforms are unquestionably
worthwhile: to produce better decisions; to avoid inconsistency; and to
enhance the perceived legitimacy of the process. The mechanisms of
international adjudication are naturally susceptible to improvement in
each of these respects; the matter merits reflection.
The objectives of better and more consistent decision-making may be
considered together, since the idea is not consistency at any cost, but
respectable consistency. The most frequently suggested idea is that of
imposing an appellate body to ensure quality and predictability. For
example, Mr Jacques Werner, a Geneva lawyer and publisher, in proposing the creation of an ‘appellate court’, because the ‘system has to become
more predictable’,31 referred to the experience of ‘the old GATT system’
of adjudicating disputes by panels. ‘Those displeased with the panels’
decisions ridiculed them as having been taken by ‘unelected faceless
bureaucrats!’ The problem, he suggested, was that they were unappealable.
30
31
Ibid. at p. 39.
Jacques Werner, ‘Making Investment Arbitration More Certain: A Modest Proposal’,
(2003) 4 Journal of World Investment 767, at p. 783. For a more in-depth articulation of a
similar proposal, see Charles H. Brower II, ‘Structure, Legitimacy and NAFTA’s
Investment Chapter’, (2003) 36 Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law 37.
241
Denial of Justice in International Law
He wrote that the new WTO Appellate Body has conferred ‘added
respectability . . . and acceptability to the whole process’.
Politics makes strange bedfellows; perhaps a pro-investment lawyer like
Werner finds momentary allies of the anti-globalising persuasion when he
speaks of the need to reform investment arbitration. Such ostensible
sympathisers would, however, be unlikely to support any proposal
which credits the WTO, their bête noire, with ‘respectability’ and ‘acceptability’. Business interests at the opposite end of the ideological spectrum
might take a similarly critical view, as evidenced by the reaction from the
US steel industry quoted above, referring to ‘the WTO’s abuse of power
and infringement of US sovereignty’. It cannot be assumed that WTO
proceedings are perceived as having greater international legitimacy than
other fora applying international law.
Beyond political reactions, one should also observe that the comparison between the WTO system and the practice of investment arbitration
raises more questions than it answers, with respect to the identity of
decision-makers as well as the type of issues submitted to them. Surely
there can be no valid comparison between ‘faceless bureaucrats’ imposed
upon parties and the arbitrators selected by the disputants in international
arbitrations involving states.
Equally, one must be conscious of the fact that WTO disputes focus
on the legitimacy of general measures, whereas investment disputes
often arise out of particular executive actions relating to specific transactions. To the extent that an international arbitral tribunal evaluates
specific facts, there can be no complaint about inconsistent results,
because those facts will not be the same as those evaluated by another
tribunal.
But of course international arbitral tribunals also rule on contentions of
law. What about inconsistencies in that regard? A lawyer who acted for
the US Government in a number of NAFTA arbitrations, Barton Legum,
has stated that:
States traditionally have provided for standing tribunals to address cases of
public importance, particularly where a significant volume of claims is at issue.
If the result of the next few years is a collection of disparate decisions with widely
varying and case-specific approaches to the issues presented, states may be
tempted to consider replacing the system of ad hoc tribunals with a standing
one that is perhaps capable of producing more consistent and coherent results.32
32
‘Trends and Challenges in Investor-State Arbitration’, (2003) 19 Arbitration International
143, at 147.
242
The menace of ‘obscure arbiters’?
But precisely what kind of permanent tribunal is envisaged? Once one
begins to imagine its concrete form and method, a number of considerations give pause.
First, inconsistencies of principle are relatively rare. The two awards in
the notorious cases between the Lauder Group and the Czech Republic
certainly reflected different evaluations of fact between two tribunals.33
Yet there was no fundamental disagreement as to the legal principles to be
applied, only a sharp divergence as to how they applied to the facts as
pleaded and proved. The claimant alleged an indirect expropriation. The
two tribunals came to different views as to whether there had been
regulatory interference of such a magnitude as to constitute an unlawful
deprivation. There is consensus in the vast literature on indirect takings
that such claims cannot be decided by applying formulae, but require an
informed view of all the circumstances. It is not astonishing to find that
two cases of such a nature are pleaded and decided differently when
presented before two different tribunals. The Czech problem resulted
rather from the happenstance that a single investment had materialised in
a legal framework which did not ensure comprehensive jurisdiction in a
single forum, and that the respondent state – to its ultimate embarrassment –
rejected a proposal to have the two cases consolidated and heard by the
tribunal constituted under the Czech–US treaty. The controversy was
thus artificially divided. Such an aberration falls to be solved, or not, on its
own terms, and does not justify the imposition of an appellate jurisdiction
on other cases which do not present such anomalies.
Secondly, to the extent that issues of principle remain controversial –
and such issues do exist – the fact that some time is needed to achieve a
settled jurisprudence is not surprising in a field where so many fundamental questions involving the interpretation of investment treaties have
been litigated only in the last five years. It seems naı̈ve to speak of
inconsistency or unpredictability. After all, new fields of litigation often
require many years of development within national legal systems. There is
no reason to think the corpus of international investment awards will take
longer to crystallise; if anything, in light of the intense transnational
attention generated by these awards, it may be more rapid.34
33
Ronald S. Lauder v. Czech Republic, award rendered under Czech–US treaty, 3 September
2001, 9 ICSID Reports [forthcoming]; CME Czech Republic BV v. Czech Republic, award
rendered under Czech–Netherlands treaty, 13 September 2001, 9 ICSID Reports
[forthcoming].
34
From his review of cases arising in the late 1990s, including those against his
government, Sampliner, ‘Arbitration of Expropriation Cases’, at pp. 42–43, expects
243
Denial of Justice in International Law
Thirdly, even appellate or other permanent bodies are unpredictable.
Their view of the definition of relevant norms tends to evolve as they
consider them in the prism of different facts, and of course their views may
change simply as a function of changes over time in their membership.
One may wonder how much those who complain of inconsistency know
about national law. Kenneth Waltz chided those ‘who would have us settle
disputes internationally as they are domestically without first understanding how disputes are settled domestically’.35 The law, wrote Holmes, ‘will
become entirely consistent only when it ceases to grow’.36
Fourthly, the perceptions of legitimacy of yet more adjudicatory bodies
involved in the application of international law is problematic. Why
should persons selected through the political processes of an international
organisation be more legitimate than those chosen in accordance with the
agreement of the particular disputants in the particular case?37 To take
the case of the WTO Appellate Body, whatever one may make of the
criticisms, they are being raised – left and right. Moreover, as Legum
points out, even if it were the case that:
most participants have a generally positive view of the WTO Appellate Body,
their experience has not necessarily been shared by participants before some
other standing international tribunals. A standing tribunal that takes an exceedingly expansive view of its mandate and the substantive law may be more of a
liability than a benefit from the perspective of the States that create it.38
One such practical reality has to do with the participants in the hypothetical corrective mechanism. The stark reality is that some governments are
likely to see no need for prevailing claimants to participate in such a
process, with the result that the challenge to the award would be debated
only between the governments signatory to the relevant treaty. Neither
increased ‘convergence between international jurisprudence and the jurisprudence of
the principal legal systems of the world’.
35
Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), at
p. 116.
36
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr, The Common Law (ed. M. Howe, Mineole, NY: Dover,1963),
at p. 32.
37
A former legal advisor of the US Department of State, reflecting back on his career,
took a disabused view of the ICJ itself; Davis R. Robinson, ‘The Role of Politics in the
Election and the Work of the Judges of the International Court of Justice’, Proceedings of
the 97th Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law (2003), at p. 277.
38
Barton Legum, ‘The Introduction of an Appellate Mechanism: The US Trade Act of
2002’, in E. Gaillard and Y. Banifatemi (eds.), Annulment of ICSID Awards: A New
Investment Protection Regime in Treaty Arbitration (Huntingdon, NY: Juris, 2004) 289, at
p. 299.
244
The menace of ‘obscure arbiters’?
government may in fact want the award to stand; the claimant investor
would have no one to defend it. The most legally impeccable award could
be sacrificed to expediency. This would be the negation of the very object
of treaty-based investor protection.
Another practical reality has to do with the composition of the reviewing
bodies. If they are to comprise only persons named by the states signatory
to the relevant treaty, a fundamental disequilibrium would be created.
Moreover, if the proponents of appellate review imagine that the correcting jurisdiction would somehow be composed of particularly eminent
jurists towering over the first-instance arbitrators, the reality of international politics makes it unlikely that such an outcome would eventuate.
Who will stop governments from appointing politically representative
individuals who know little about international arbitration but a lot
about the desiderata of their appointers? Does the world need more
politics, or more law?
The goal is not to secure unfettered discretion for arbitrators. To the
contrary, their compliance with jurisdictional requirements must be
absolute, and must be reviewable, or the whole edifice will crumble.
Even with respect to substantive issues, the development of an international legal order does not require that the parties suffer the consequences
of grossly aberrant decisions. To recall the phrase coined by a Chief
Justice of the New Zealand Court of Appeal, the determination of rights
should not be left to: ‘subjective views about which party ‘‘ought to
win’’ . . . or the formless void of individual moral opinion’.39 The domain
of international law is particularly inappropriate for intuitive justice,
because the cultural baggage of the decision-makers is so unlikely to be
homogenous.
This is certainly a serious problem, given the high degree of finality of
arbitral awards. But that leads to a fifth observation, namely that the
instruments pursuant to which international law in this field is applied
themselves contain corrective mechanisms as a part of their rules of dispute
resolution. Article 1126 of NAFTA, for example, provides for consolidation if more than one arbitration challenges the legitimacy of the same
39
Lord Justice Cooke, in Aquaculture Corp. v. New Zealand Green Mussel Co. Ltd, [1990] 3
NZLR 299. Cf. James Bacchus, The Strange Death of Sir Francis Bacon: The Do’s and
Don’ts of Appellate Advocacy in the WTO, lecture reproduced in Bacchus, Trade, at
p. 383: ‘Don’t bother arguing that the Appellate Body should embrace some
‘‘teleological’’ approach to interpretation that would enable the members to impose
their purely personal views on the meaning of the ‘‘covered agreements’’. They don’t.
They won’t.’
245
Denial of Justice in International Law
governmental measure. They may thus be merged into a single superarbitration where the result will be binding on one and all. Inconsistency
is inconceivable. And in the ordinary run of cases to which that mechanism does not apply, review procedures are available under the relevant
arbitration rules. That is precisely how the Canadian courts, for example,
came to deal with the Metalclad v. Mexico,40 Feldman v. Mexico41 and S. D.
Myers v. Canada42 awards.
Criticism to the effect that international arbitration is overly burdensome – too time-consuming, too expensive – is a different matter. Justice
is unlikely ever to come instantly at no cost to the deserving party, but
that observation does not justify complacency. Still, to evaluate costeffectiveness can be a daunting task. Comparisons between the WTO
Appellate Body and individual arbitral tribunals are hazardous.
Investment arbitrations and multilateral systems for resolving trade disputes are quite different things. In arbitration, there is usually an extensive
and controversial narrative to be examined by reference to a particular
transaction, leading to time-consuming fact-finding through oral as well
as documentary evidence. A ruling on a trade dispute may, on the other
hand, be prepared in the abstract; when fact-finding is necessary, it is of a
completely different, macroeconomic nature. Most of all, the premises of
a one-off arbitration between a private party and a state are fundamentally different from those of a standing multilateral body comprising only
states, who may be either claimants or defendants, whose relationships
are by definition permanent, and whose propensity for settling individual controversies are affected by a complex variety of considerations.
An investor who feels there is nothing left to lose, on the other hand, may
be impelled by pure burn-my-bridges intractability.43
40
Supreme Court of British Columbia, judgment of 2 May 2001, 5 ICSID Reports 236.
Mexico v. Feldman Karpa, Superior Court of Justice, Ontario, judgment of 3 December
2003, 8 ICSID Reports 500.
42
Federal Court of Canada, judgment of 13 January 2004, 8 ICSID Reports 194.
43
None of those observations should detract from the fundamental proposition that both
state-to-state trade controversies and investor–state disputes are elements of the vast
task of building the international rule of law. In 2000, Julio Lacarte-Muró, the
Uruguayan jurist who served as the first Chairman of the WTO Appellate Body
from 1995 to 1997, co-wrote (with Petina Gappah) an article entitled ‘Developing
Countries and the WTO Legal and Dispute Settlement System: A View From the
Bench’, which concluded as follows: ‘It has often been said that the WTO dispute
settlement system provides an opportunity for economically weak smaller countries to
challenge trade measures taken by more economically powerful Members. This point
deserves some emphasis. The Appellate Body is an integral part of a rules based,
41
246
The menace of ‘obscure arbiters’?
Nor is it easy to make good on claims that arbitrations are overly
lengthy. As practitioners know, proceedings are often interrupted by
negotiation, and over-eager arbitrators may be put in their place by the
parties’ joint indication that the exigencies of the case require more
elaborate and time-consuming case management. When both an investor
and the respondent state make such representations, it is not easy for an
arbitrator to disregard their wishes.
These observations are confirmed by consideration of the operations of
the unique ad hoc committees constituted to deal with requests for annulments of awards under the ICSID Convention. Unlike most ICSID
tribunals, these committees are constituted only of members appointed
by ICSID, and are therefore assuredly comprised of non-partisan, experienced international adjudicators. Their task is not to conduct a de novo
review of the dispute, but to determine whether the award is vitiated by
any of the five strictly limited defects defined in Article 52 of the
Convention. Yet requests for annulment invariably lead to substantial
briefing and hearings. The proceedings usually last more than a year.
These are intrinsically complex matters.
Those who think in terms of short-term interests, or are interested in
pursuing single objectives without heed to their effect on others, tend to be
quick to identify the causes of their disappointment and to propose instant
cures. They seem to have little patience for examining the kinds of factors
just described. That their proposed cures have been tried in the past and
found wanting, or that they run counter to fundamental values that have
emerged over many generations, seems ignored. National initiatives
intended to curtail the reach of international law must therefore be
viewed with scepticism.
For example, in March 2002 the Chairman of the US Senate Finance
Committee wrote to the US Trade Representatives proposing:
(i) that foreign investors should be denied any substantive rights not
given to Americans; (ii) to establish an appellate review of NAFTA
awards; and (iii) to support government screening of arbitration
requests.44 Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts argued that the home
country of the investor should be able to prohibit attempts to initiate
‘‘judicialized’’ dispute settlement mechanism which ensures transparency and predictability. This system works to the advantage of all Members, but it especially gives
security to the weaker Members who often, in the past, lacked the political or economic
clout to enforce their rights and to protect their interests. In the WTO, right perseveres
over might.’ ((2000) Journal of International Economic Law 395, at pp. 400–401; emphasis in
the original.)
44
Aguilar Alvarez and Park, ‘New Face’, at pp. 385–386.
247
Denial of Justice in International Law
international arbitration if its officials determine that it ‘lacks legal
merit’.45
If ensuring that foreigners receive no greater substantive rights than
nationals means that the legislators will see to it that nationals have as much
protection as that given by international law, who can object? But if it means
that international law is to be cut down to national treatment, it means that
the Yankees have belatedly become converts to the Calvo Doctrine.
International law would suffer.
At any rate, the US Trade Act of 2002,46 as finally adopted, while
asserting in its preamble that the US ‘provides a high level of protection
for investment’, defines the ‘negotiating objectives’ of the government’s
trade negotiators as ensuring that foreigners receive no ‘greater substantive rights with respect to investment protections’ than domestic investors
by providing, inter alia, for ‘mechanisms to eliminate frivolous claims’, for
an appellate body ‘or similar mechanism’ to ‘provide coherence to the
interpretation of investment provisions in trade agreements’, and for
public arbitral proceedings and the admissibility of amicus curiae submissions from non-governmental organisations and interest groups.47 The
objectives are intended to serve as criteria to be examined by Congress
before it decides whether to approve any new agreement negotiated by
the executive branch.
These ideas raise a host of problems. For example, the pursuit of an
appropriate appellate body will not only face the questions raised above,
but also the plain fact that most investment arbitrations arise from a
very large number of bilateral treaties containing separate dispute
resolution provisions; to establish a single body with jurisdiction over
all of them would be difficult.48 Would the expense and delays associated with a swarm of new adjudicatory bodies, involving inevitably
high fixed costs but uncertain levels of activity, truly be of value to the
international community? Strictly speaking, the question is irrelevant to
the present study, which focuses on the authority of international
45
148 Congressional Record S4504 (16 May 2002).
Public Law No. 107–210, 116 Stat. 933 (6 August 2002).
47
See ibid., Division B, Title XXI, of the Act. This development gave Mr Legum the
impetus to return to the subject of permanent tribunals and appellate review, and to
consider its potential concrete implications; in Legum, ‘Appellate Mechanism’, at p. 5.
In particular, he opined that it is ‘not immediately apparent’ how an appellate body
could comfortably coexist with the New York Convention.
48
Cf. Hugo Perezcano, ‘Investment Protection Agreements – Should a Multilateral
Approach be Reconsidered’, (2003) 4 Journal of World Investment 929.
46
248
The menace of ‘obscure arbiters’?
adjudicators as opposed to national authorities, irrespective of how the
former operate, but it is impossible not to be concerned about the spectre of
unintended potential consequences which may hamper the fulfilment
of the rule of law.
The desire to achieve consistency and to avoid misconduct in international adjudication is legitimate, but it did not suddenly emerge for the
first time when the US Congress turned to the matter in 2002.
Generations of scholars and practitioners have wrestled with these questions. It should not be too much to ask that would-be reformers ask
themselves seriously whether they are rushing off to replace an imperfect
but functioning model with a visibly flawed one.
If an international tribunal’s application of international law is overruled by a national court, the most important objective of the arbitral
process, namely neutrality, may be compromised. It is fortunate that the
dominant worldwide trend is not to allow national courts to review
arbitral awards for alleged errors of fact or law. National courts therefore
tend to control the work of international arbitrators only insofar as they
have exceeded their mandate or violated a fundamental rule of due
process.
Thus, consideration of appellate review in the international domain
focuses on the usefulness of creating additional international bodies which
might review awards.
There is no impediment to such bodies, and they have existed for a
long time in the sphere of purely private arbitrations. They have, for
example, been conceived as useful in the framework of trade associations, where the first level decision would be made on a rough-andready basis; if either side wished to take the matter further, it could
advance to a more elaborate appellate level, where perhaps more
experienced persons would ensure more sophisticated decisions.
Under such systems, there is no reason not to have an unlimited
power to revise the first decision.49 Nevertheless, such procedures have
typically been limited to dispute resolution mechanisms established by
commodities industries and have involved routine disputes among parties
engaged in a high volume of similar transactions. It is safe to say that for
49
The German Supreme Court once upheld an award against a German party by an
appellate tribunal under the European Wholesale Potato Trade Rules, sitting in
Brussels; the claim had previously been rejected by a first-level tribunal sitting in
Hamburg. Decision of 9 March 1978, Wertpapier-Mitteilungen 573 (1978).
249
Denial of Justice in International Law
most lawyers involved in international arbitration, two-tiered arbitration
is a curiosity.
More relevant to current international practice is the role of ad hoc
committees under the ICSID system and that of the International Court
of Arbitration in arbitrations under the International Chamber of
Commerce Rules. The essential feature in each case is that the deciding
organ has the same degree of neutrality vis-à-vis the parties as does the
initial tribunal; it is not a national authority. The ICC Court ‘scrutinises’
each award before it is delivered to the parties. The Court has the
authority to modify matters of form, but only to make comment on points
of substance for the arbitrators’ consideration. There is evidence that this
function enhances the bona fides of ICC awards in the eyes of national
courts called on to recognise or enforce them.50
ICSID ad hoc committees have broader authority; they may annul
awards. Still, their power is limited to determining whether the tribunal
had indeed been given the mandate it exercised, and whether it accomplished all of its mission – but no more – while respecting due process.
Whether the right balance was struck in the initial experiences with
ICSID ad hoc committees, in cases involving Cameroon51 and
Indonesia,52 is debatable,53 but since then a proper understanding of
the annulment mechanism appears to have been achieved.54
In investment arbitrations, some fundamental issues recur frequently.
One is that of the jurisdictional posture of an investor having grievances
under both contract and treaty. It is important that consistency is
achieved in terms of understanding how international tribunals should
resolve the complex and crucial issues that arise in such circumstances.
There is much to be said for ensuring that a proper corrective function is
carried out by a panel of experienced specialists not named by the
parties.55
50
W. Laurence Craig, William W. Park and Jan Paulsson, International Chamber of Commerce
Arbitration (3rd edn, Dobbs Ferry, NY: Oceana, 2000), at pp. 380–383.
51
Klöckner Industrie-Anlagen GmbH et al. v. Cameroon and SOCAME, annulment decision,
3 May 1985, 2 ICSID Reports 95 (El-Kosheri, Seidl-Hohenveldern, Lalive (presiding)).
52
Amco Asia Corp. et al. v. Indonesia, annulment decision, 16 May 1986, 1 ICSID Reports 509.
53
Alan Redfern, ‘ICSID: Losing Its Appeal?’ (1987) 3 Arbitration International 98.
54
Jan Paulsson, ‘ICSID’s Achievements and Prospects’, (1991) 6 ICSID Review 380;
Christoph Schreuer, ‘Three Generations of ICSID Annulment Proceedings’, in
E. Gaillard and Y. Banifatemi (eds.), Annulment of ICSID Awards: A New Investment
Protection Regime in Treaty Arbitration (Huntington, NY: Juris, 2004).
55
Vivendi is a salient example of the establishment by an ad hoc committee of the proper
approach to a central issue – contract claims v. treaty claims – which arises with
250
The menace of ‘obscure arbiters’?
In contrast to the inchoate proposals described above, important and
well-considered reforms have been implemented with respect to the transparency of the arbitral process. The NAFTA Free Trade Commission has
twice addressed the concerns of third parties in this regard. In 2001, it
declared with binding effect that NAFTA does not impose a ‘general duty
of confidentiality on the disputing parties to a Chapter Eleven arbitration’.56 This decision led the way to the practically open-book basis on
which NAFTA investment arbitrations have been conducted thereafter.
Written submissions and evidence produced by the parties, procedural
orders and substantive decisions rendered by the arbitrators, and indeed
transcripts of the proceedings become public, it seems, in an electronic
instant.57 And in 2003 the Commission announced:
*
*
an affirmation of the authority of investor – state tribunals to accept written
submissions (amicus curiae briefs) by non-disputing parties, coupled with
recommended procedures for tribunals on the handling of such submissions;
and
endorsement of a standard form for the Notices of Intent to initiate arbitration that disputing investors are required to submit under Article 1119 of the
NAFTA.58
The Commission urged tribunals to ‘determine the appropriate logistical
arrangements for open hearings in consultation with disputing parties . . . use of closed-circuit television systems, Internet webcasting, or
other forms of access’. It laid down guidelines to determine on what basis
third parties should be deemed to have a legitimate reason to make
representations to arbitral tribunals, and to ensure that those representations do not make the process unmanageable.
inevitable regularity; Compañı́a de Aguas del Aconquija and Vivendi Universal v. Argentina,
annulment decision, 3 July 2002, 6 ICSID Reports 340; 42 ILM 1135 (2002).
56
NAFTA, Free Trade Commission, Chapter 11 Interpretation, 31 July 2001, 6 ICSID
Reports 567.
57
The Methanex case may have been the first instance of an investor – state arbitration in
which facilities were provided for members of the public to view and hear the
proceedings through closed-circuit video (in June 2004). The auditorium was crowded
on the first day, but soon thereafter emptied as tedium took its toll. The striving for
transparency does not arise from the public’s craving for the arcana of
decision-making, but from its aversion to the thought that it is occult.
58
NAFTA Free Trade Commission Statement on Transparency, 7 October 2003, (2005)
44 ILM 796.
251
Denial of Justice in International Law
Respect for the ‘obscure arbiter’ as a test of commitment
to the international rule of law
What does it mean to favour international adjudication? Whether one
should favour it is a different question, and one which will not detain us at
all, in the spirit of Sir Elihu Lauterpacht’s words as he ended the 1990
lectures in memory of his father:
It has simply been assumed – as being beyond discussion and as being in the best
interests of our international society – that negotiated, but principled, settlement,
or if no negotiated settlement can be reached, then the judgment or recommendation of a third party, is far, far better than the use of force. That is why, when
gloom pervades, as occasionally it must, there is still virtue in attempting, by
critical analysis and creative proposal, to promote improvement in the machinery of international justice.59
When examining claims of denial of justice, international tribunals
must ultimately apply concepts which are inherently elastic. No one has
been able to define the international delict of denial of justice without
using abstractions such as ‘egregious’ or ‘unacceptable’ or ‘manifestly
iniquitous’. Such is the nature of the thing. International adjudicators
are not robots. Even if they were, there is no formula according to which
they could be programmed to evaluate the facts of all cases in a uniform
manner.
It should be obvious that when international adjudicators rule upon a
claim of denial of justice, judge they should and judge they must, bringing
to bear their cultural and intellectual baggage, applying their predispositions and experience. Subjective does not mean arbitrary. It is not the
reflection of a purely personal taste or attitude. It refers to the fact that
the quality of the judgment to be made depends on the individual understanding, knowledge and detachment of the decider. That is why a
diligent child whom one might well trust to watch a machine and
‘judge’ when a cursor reaches a red line would nevertheless not be allowed
to judge whether drivers involved in an automobile accident exercised
due care. There is no mechanistic way of applying, as already noted,
concepts which, whenever a difficult case takes us away from the comfortable certainties of their core meaning, permit inconsistent yet defensible
59
E. Lauterpacht, Aspects of the Administration of International Justice (Cambridge: Grotius
1991), at p. xiii.
252
The menace of ‘obscure arbiters’?
conclusions. Consider, for example, the italicised words in this passage
from the well-known decision from 1927 in the Chattin case (US v. Mexico):
Irregularity of court proceedings is proven with reference to absence of proper
investigations, insufficiency of confrontations, withholding from the accused the
opportunity to know all of the charges brought against him, undue delay of the
proceedings, making the hearings in open court a mere formality, and a continued
absence of seriousness on the part of the Court.60
Or the italicised words in the formulation of a European scholar who
sought, in 1949, to distil the following definition of the procedural rights
protected by international law:
the right to a fair, non-discriminatory and unbiased hearing, the right to a just decision
rendered in full compliance with the laws of the State within a reasonable time.61
One might as well rewrite this as a formula, using J for the value
‘adequate justice’ and the other symbols replacing each of the italicised
words in the order they appear:
No J if none of [A, B, or C] or neither of [(X and Y) with Z], where A, B, C, X, Y,
and Z can assume any values within a wide range.62
Nor could it be objected that such expressions reflected early developments in international law, and that contemporary jurisprudence has
developed objective and predictable standards. One need only consider
that the Mondev v. US award, handed down in 2002, set down a test to the
effect that a judicial decision runs afoul of the international standard if it
was ‘clearly improper and discreditable’;63 or that the Loewen tribunal’s
articulation of the delict in 2003 finally boiled down to this: ‘a lack of due
process leading to an outcome which offends a sense of judicial propriety’.64
One may, and should, insist on integrity and independence, but it is
futile to imagine a vast cohort of international arbitrators who would
decide every case identically. Such is the function of judging, and the
60
Chattin (US v. Mexico), 23 July 1927, IV RIAA 282, at para. 30.
Andreas Roth, The Minimum Standard of International Law Applied to Aliens ( Leiden:
A.W. Sijthoff, 1949), at p. 185 (emphasis added).
62
The conceit is inspired by the one reproduced in H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law (2nd
edn, Oxford University Press, 1994), at p. 13.
63
Mondev at para. 127. ‘This is admittedly a somewhat open-ended standard, but it may
be that in practice no more precise formula can be offered to cover the range of
possibilities.’
64
Loewen, 26 June 2003, at para. 132; the Loewen award also explicitly approved the
Mondev formulation, in para. 133.
61
253
Denial of Justice in International Law
person who does not accept that proposition simply does not accept
international adjudication.65
If states are to be held accountable for breaches of international law, they
cannot be the ultimate judges of the breach alleged. To say that the international examination of national judgments would be an impermissible infringement of sovereignty is to advocate the negation of international law,
which by its nature is conceived as a limitation on the behaviour of states.
If the problem is a mistrust of international adjudicators, it merits examination as such. The principle should not suffer because its applier is mistrusted.
The question then becomes: do the relevant adjudicators merit mistrust?
The quality of decision-making is naturally paramount. The selection
of judges and arbitrators must be punctiliously consistent with the relevant international agreements. The impartiality and quality of their
judgments and awards must command respect. Otherwise, their claims
to legitimacy will founder either on the Scylla of suspicion that they are
but the agents of occult forces who wish to undo the policy determinations
of democratic governments, or on the Charybdis of contempt on the part
of those who would see them as too timorous to impose the full force of
international law on powerful states.
The history of the adjudication of complaints of denial of justice before
international bodies does not show that legal theory was skewed to suit
powerful states. This proposition may be demonstrated in four ways.
First, the annals of international arbitration are replete with instances of
claims by one western country against another, founded on denial of
justice, with no suggestion that the claimant’s conception of the delict was
less rigorous than the one invoked against weaker states.
In an essay entitled ‘International Responsibility of States for Acts of
the Judiciary’,66 Judge Jiménez de Arèchaga reproduced the salient
65
This observation would be equally apposite with respect to any number of substantive
issues. For example, one of the most vexing contemporary issues in the international law
of foreign investment relates to the distinction to be drawn between compensatable state
action that is ‘tantamount to expropriation’, on the one hand, and police-power regulation or tax that does not give rise to an obligation to compensate, on the other. In a
passage characteristic of the approach of international tribunals in this area, the award in
Feldman v. Mexico, after reciting a number of specific findings of facts, concluded in para.
111: ‘While none of these factors alone is necessarily conclusive, in the Tribunal’s view
taken together they tip the expropriation/regulation balance away from a finding of
expropriation.’ (Award, 16 December 2002, 7 ICSID Reports 339.)
66
In W.G. Friedmann, L. Henkin and O.J. Lissitzyn (eds.), Transnational Law in a Changing
Society – Essays in Honor of Philip C. Jessup ( New York: Columbia University Press, 1972),
at p. 171.
254
The menace of ‘obscure arbiters’?
pleadings of the Barcelona Traction case67 in which he had participated as a
member of Spain’s legal team. Barcelona Traction was of course disposed of
by the success of Spain’s preliminary objection, but that objection had
been joined to the merits, with the result that the substantive case was fully
pleaded in memorials and oral hearings. Belgium submitted that all the
acts of the Spanish authorities which underlay its grievance were part of a
series of denials of justice. Jiménez de Aréchaga’s essay illustrates how
these two states, neither of whom could be said to hold a neocolonialist
ascendancy over the other – albeit of course it was in Spain’s interest to
disprove the existence of any denial of justice – and although their
versions of the facts were irreductibly opposed, in the course of the
refinements of their arguments, thrusting and parrying, asserting and
conceding in this momentous case, eventually reached substantially common ground as to the definition of the basis for determining the liability of
states for acts of their judiciaries.
Secondly, as seen, many claims failed although they were brought
against relatively weak Latin American states. Of the cases discussed in
this book, North American Dredging and Neer were salient instances. But the
examples are legion.68
Thirdly, in cases involving claims between equally powerful countries
there is no sign that judges, arbitrators, or commissioners applied different standards from those followed when the respondent state was weak.69
67
Case concerning the Barcelona Traction, Light and Power Company (Belgium v. Spain) (New
Application: 1962), Second Phase, 1970 ICJ Reports 4.
68
In the addendum on the Calvo Clause to The International Law Commission
(Dugard), Third Report on Diplomatic Protection, UN Doc. A/CN.4/523/Add. 1,
Professor Dugard referred to cases in which mixed claims commissions ‘displayed a
remarkable leniency to Mexico in finding that there had been no denial of justice on
the facts’, at para. 30.
69
See, e.g., Spanish Zone of Morocco (UK v. Spain), 29 May 1923, II RIAA 617; Robert E.
Brown (US v. Great Britain), 23 November 1923, VI RIAA 120, holding that ‘all three
branches of the Government conspired to ruin [the claimant’s] enterprise’, at p. 129.
There are of course bad cases. It is hard to deny that the Pelletier case (US v. Haiti),
Moore, Arbitrations at p. 1757, arose in scandalous circumstances. A resourceful US
claimant was able to mobilise political support for imposing an arbitration agreement
upon a Haitian government powerless to resist. An award was rendered against Haiti
by an arbitrator of US nationality. But it is equally important to note that although the
arbitrator was a former Justice of the US Supreme Court, the US Government quickly
decided to treat the award as a nullity – explicitly described as such by the Secretary of
State – and accepted Haiti’s ‘remonstrance’ against the award. A concise description of
the record of this case is found in W.M. Reisman, Nullity and Revision: The Review and
Enforcement of International Judgments and Awards (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1971), at pp. 401–404 and 435–437.
255
Denial of Justice in International Law
Fourthly, for all the abstract pronouncements of Latin Americans
about the appropriateness of a narrow definition of denial of justice,
their pleadings in actual cases, when espousing the claim of their own
nationals, are undistinguishable from those propounded by the traditionally claiming states.70
The early American example
It is worthwhile reflecting on the early American experiences with international law and contrast it with some current attitudes in the United
States, where recent political debate seems to lack both a historical
perspective and an understanding of the reasons for bowing to international adjudication.
The great US Secretary of State, Elihu Root, in his opening address
before the third annual meeting of the American Society of International
Law in 1909, observed that ‘proud independent sovereign commonwealths like Virginia and Pennsylvania and New York and
Massachusetts’, which ‘revered their judges’, had nevertheless accepted
a Constitution which recognised that courts are likely ‘to be affected by
local sentiment, prejudice, and pressure’. Thus:
We have provided in the third article of the Constitution of the United States that
in controversies between states or between citizens of different states the
70
See the examples cited by Freeman, at 132, note 3, and in particular the following
liberal definition of denial of justice articulated by counsel for Cuba in the
Cantero-Herrera claim against Peru: ‘by denying access to the courts, by an undue
procrastination in the court proceedings in open violation of the adjective laws of the
country, by the non-existence of courts, by want of a sufficient number of officials to
dispatch the business of the courts, by not offering proper guaranties due to their use as
means of oppression against aliens, or by removing the judges after they have taken
cognizance of the cases, or by the excuses of the judges to dictate sentences, or by their
handing down of unjust sentences in violation of the substantive laws of the country, or
by refusing to comply with the provisions of a law in accordance with the interpretation
given by the courts, or by refusing to execute a final sentence, or by amnesty laws
protecting crimes to the prejudice of the interests of aliens, or lastly by any other means
which deny redress to the injured alien who has suffered in his interests.’ For a more
recent example of the weaker state subscribing to a broad conception of denial of
justice, see the Ambatielos Claim (Greece v. UK ), 6 March 1956, XII RIAA 83, at p. 102.
Greece went so far as to contend, unsuccessfully, that in withholding allegedly material
documents the British Government denied Ambatielos ‘access to the [English] Courts’
because such access should perforce be understood to include ‘the obligation to make it
possible for [the foreign national] to avail himself of all the documents necessary for the
defence of his rights’. (Ibid. at pp. 110–111; the case has more than a dose of irony,
considering that it arose a century after the Don Pacifico affair, with the tables turned.)
256
The menace of ‘obscure arbiters’?
determination of what is just shall not be confined to the courts of justice of either
state, but may be brought in the Federal tribunals, selected and empowered by
the representatives of both states and of all the states – true arbitral tribunals in
the method of their creation and the office they perform.71
Root’s point was that at the international level as well, ‘in order to avoid
the danger of denials of justice, and to prevent the belief that justice had
not been done’, states should accept, by international agreement, that the
decisions of their courts be reviewed by international tribunals. He
pointed to no less than twelve cases where matters already decided by
the US Supreme Court had subsequently been submitted to international
tribunals, six of them reaching opposite results72 and all of them complied
with by the US Government.
There may be many instances where government officials dutifully
accept that national sovereignty is restricted not only by international
law, and moreover by international adjudicators who may apply international law in a manner adverse to the government’s position. But it
would be foolish to ignore that there are also many instances when
government officials challenge the authority of international adjudicators. International judgments or awards may be politically sensitive and
highly unpopular in countries affected by the decision. Of all international adjudicators, arbitrators may seem to be the most fragile.
After all, in their capacity as arbitrators they are neither elected officials
nor even international civil servants.
But was the American acceptance of the international adjudication
really a matter of highmindedness? Or did the US Government understand
that it had no choice in the matter, lest it harm an international legal order
from which the US too stood to benefit – and had done so in the past?
To understand why the US accepted that its Supreme Court’s decisions
be disregarded by international adjudicators, it is appropriate to go back
to the previous century, and more particularly the so-called Jay Treaty of
19 November 1794 between the UK and the US.73 The Treaty provided
71
E. Root, ‘The Relations between International Tribunals of Arbitration and the
Jurisdiction of National Courts’, (1909) 3 AJIL 529, at p. 534.
72
Ibid. at p. 535: the Hiawatha (2 Black), the Circassian (2 Wallace), the Springbock (5 Wallace),
the Sir William Peel (5 Wallace), the Volant (5 Wallace) and the Science (5 Wallace)’; all cited
with further references in Jackson H. Ralston, The Law and Procedure of International
Tribunals (Stanford University Press, 1926), at p. 114.
73
8 Stat. 116. The Treaty was named after John Jay, who negotiated and signed the
Treaty and subsequently became the first Chief of Justice of the US Supreme Court. In
‘Federalism, NAFTA Chapter Eleven and the Jay Treaty of 1794’, (2001) 18 ICSID
257
Denial of Justice in International Law
for three five-member commissions: one to resolve a controversy concerning the border between the US and Canada, and two to adjudicate the
claims of British and American creditors, respectively. A number of British
claims arose from confiscations carried out against persons who had supported the Crown during the Revolutionary War. The commission dealing
with American grievances was faced with a number of claims concerning
the capture of US merchant vessels and their cargo. The forfeiture of the
claimants’ property as prizes under international law had been determined
by the English courts, and the agent of the UK argued thus:
a solemn decision of the high court of appeals, which is the supreme court of the
law of nations in this kingdom, ought to be respected and confirmed by other
authorities proceeding on the same law.74
The US Commissioners secured a rejection of this position (by a
majority vote). Thus, in the important case of The Betsey, decided on 13
April 1797, one of them (Christopher Gore) wrote as follows, in an oftquoted passage:
But that the decision of any court, however respectable its members, is conclusive on
foreign governments, as to the law of nations, and that the principles on which it is
founded may not be rightfully contested, as contrary to that law, is not, in my belief,
warranted by just ideas of the equal independence of nations or by their practice.75
William Pinckney expressed himself to the same effect, but in greater
detail:
the jurisdiction of the court of the capturing nation is complete upon the point of
property . . . its sentence forecloses all controversy between claimant and captor and
News 6, Barton Legum noted the five following characteristics of investor – state
arbitration under NAFTA: ‘First, it allows foreign investors to sue the United States
government for damages under international, and not domestic, law;
Second, it allows those investors to claim that state governments within the United
States have taken their property or otherwise violated international law;
Third, it requires the federal government of the United States, and not the state
governments, to assume liability for those state-government acts;
Fourth, it requires the federal government’s liability to be decided not by judges
appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, but by a panel
of international arbitrators; and
Fifth, it contemplates a panel of arbitrators that may be composed of United States
nationals, nationals of the State of the foreign investor and a presiding arbitrator who is
presumptively selected by agreement.’ He then observed that each of these five
characteristics was also extant under the 1794 Jay Treaty between the US and Great
Britain.
74
The Betsey (US v. Great Britain), Moore, Arbitrations, at p. 3161. 75 Ibid. at p. 3162.
258
The menace of ‘obscure arbiters’?
those claiming under them, and . . . if it do not appear unjust on the face of it, it
suffices to terminate forever all ordinary judicial inquiry upon the matter of it. These are
unquestionable effects of a final admiralty sentence, and in these respects it is
unimpeachable. But [Britain’s] objection reaches infinitely further. It swells an
incidental jurisdiction over things into a direct, complete, and unqualified control
over nations and their citizens. The author I have just quoted [Rutherford,
Institutes of Natural Law] proves incontestably . . . that this doctrine is absurd
and inadmissible; that neither the United States nor the claimants its citizens
are bound to take for just the sentence of the lords, if in fact it is not so; and that
the affirmance of an illegal condemnation, so far from legitimating the wrong
done by the original seizure and precluding the neutral from seeking reparation
for it against the British nation, is peculiarly that very act which consummates the
wrong and indisputably perfects the neutral’s right of demanding that reparation
through the medium of his own government.76
In his International Law Digest published 89 years later, Francis Wharton
wrote as follows:
It was maintained before the British and American Mixed Commission sitting in
London under the treaty of 1794 that a decision of a British prize court estopped
the party against whom it was made from proceedings, when a foreigner,
through his own government. This was contested by Mr. Pinkney, and his
position was affirmed by the arbitration acting under the advice of Lord
Chancellor Loughborough, and is now accepted law.77
So by the time of the six cases invoked by Mr Root as examples of US
compliance with international law, it would have been difficult for the US
government to insist that its own courts – even the Supreme Court –
would have the last word with respect to claims by British subjects that
their goods had been wrongfully captured in connection with blockades
during the American Civil War. These were all prize cases – dealing with
the validity under international law of the seizure at sea of vessels and
cargo – that arose before the British–American Claims Commission
76
77
Ibid. at pp. 3184–3185.
F. Wharton (ed.), A Digest of the International Law of the United States, (3 vols., 2nd edn,
Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1887), vol. II, at p. 695. In the
Garrison case decided by the US–Mexican Commission created under a Treaty of 4 July
1868, the Umpire (Francis Lieber) reached further back in time: ‘It is objected that the
case has been adjudicated by the proper Mexican court and can not be reopened
before this Commission; that therefore it ought to be dismissed. It is true that it is a
matter of the greatest political and international delicacy for one country to disacknowledge the judicial decisions of a court of another country, which nevertheless the
law of nations universally allows in extreme cases. It has done so from the times of Hugo
Grotius.’ (Moore, Arbitrations, at p. 3129; emphasis added.)
259
Denial of Justice in International Law
operating under the Washington Treaty of 1871. The fundamental
principle was established in the following way:
The question was early raised, on the part of the United States, as to the
jurisdiction of these prize cases by the commission, both in respect to cases
where the decision of the ultimate appellate tribunal of the United States had
been had, and to those in which no appeal had been prosecuted on the part of the
claimants to such ultimate tribunal. As to the former class of cases, the undersigned [Hale] may properly state that he personally entertained no doubt of the
jurisdiction of the commission, as an international tribunal, to review the decisions of the prize courts of the United States, where the parties alleging themselves aggrieved had prosecuted their claims by appeal to the court of last resort.
As this jurisdiction, however, had been sometimes questioned, he deemed it
desirable that a formal adjudication by the commission should be had upon this
question. The commission unanimously sustained their jurisdiction in this class
of cases, and as will be seen, all the members of the commission at some time
joined in awards against the United States in such cases.78
These echoes of history may suggest that respect for international
adjudication is not a dangerous adventure sponsored by the naı̈ve, or a
betrayal of sovereignty fomented by the concupiscent, but the rediscovery
of an old virtue of national restraint arising from the recognition of an
international community of interests.
True, this virtue may often prove powerless against unilateralist
expediency and calculation. True, there may be disheartening periods
in international life when the flame flickers feebly. But it would be wrong
to doom the international rule of law on the grounds that it requires
unrealistic self-sacrifice. To obtain the benefits and protections of a
community, one must accept some restraints. This is not a matter of
good faith or idealism, but of insight. If a community fails, and proves
itself unable to deliver, its calls for discipline are likely to go unheeded.
78
Hale’s Report, quoted in Ralston, International Arbitration from Athens to Locarno (Stanford
University Press, 1929), at p. 112. When the US and France by the Treaty of
15 January 1880 established a claims commission, neither wanted to open up matters
already decided by the national authorities of either state. To achieve this result
required an unusual restriction on an international adjudicatory body. Accordingly
the treaty contained an exceptional provision excluding claims which had been
‘diplomatically, judicially or otherwise by competent authorities heretofore disposed
of by either government’. A number of the claims which had given impetus to the
treaty were thus necessarily withdrawn once this wording was accepted. The lone
attempt to disregard this extraordinary limitation was dismissed by the Commission’s
decision not to assert jurisdiction; G.A. Le More & Co. v. US, No. 211, Moore, Arbitrations
3232, at p. 3233.
260
The menace of ‘obscure arbiters’?
Large parts of our world may seem impervious to international law.
That does not prevent anyone from understanding what international
law is, or from seeing that it is generally respected in large parts of the
globe, to the advantage, it would seem, of those who live there. So what
if the emergent law-based international community is fragmented,
unsteady, vulnerable? How is that different from the development of
national communities?
Conclusions
The proposition that states may be held accountable under international
law by arbitral tribunals created by treaty is neither new nor radical. There
were hundreds of such cases in the nineteenth century. The defendant
states were of all types: rich and powerful, European or ex-colonial.
International tribunals held the United States responsible for actions
which its Supreme Court had declared not to be breaches of international
law. Those awards were nevertheless respected by the United States.79
When one of the most illustrious of all awards was handed down
against Great Britain in the Alabama Claims case (1872), the British arbitrator
(Sir Alexander Cockburn) issued a harsh dissent, calling the award of some
US$15 million in gold ‘unjust’, but his government – far more powerful
at the time than the US – nevertheless paid the amount awarded.80
79
80
See Note 72 of this chapter above.
The Alabama Claims concerned damages caused by the Alabama and other Confederate
cruisers and privateers to Northern merchant ships during the US Civil War. They had
been equipped and provisioned in English ports. The British arbitrator refused to sign
the award and insisted hopelessly that a state is not responsible for the acts of its
citizens; the other four arbitrators considered that Great Britain had failed to comply
with its duties to maintain neutrality with due diligence. The three neutral arbitrators
were eminent individuals appointed by the Emperor of Brazil, the King of Italy and the
President of Switzerland. The literature on the Alabama Claims is perhaps the most
abundant of all in the field of international arbitration. One worthwhile account
appeared in pages 64–91 of the French professor A. Mérignac’s lively monograph,
Traité théorique et pratique de l’arbitrage international (Paris: Larose, 1895).
Twenty-five years after the Alabama Claims award, a question was put in Parliament
to the Under Foreign Secretary, George Curzon (as he then was) whether it was true
that a substantial amount of the amount collected by the US had not in fact been paid
over to private parties having claimed losses. Curzon answered that this appeared to be
the case, but: ‘It would be contrary to the undertakings of Great Britain in the treaty of
Washington, made in 1871, to request the return of any sum left over after the claims
against the award had been satisfied.
Mr. Bowles – Is there any prospect of the United States Government offering to
repay any surplus?
261
Denial of Justice in International Law
This tradition of respect for international law as applied by international tribunals should be kept in mind by contemporary critics of investment arbitration who sometimes imagine that such tribunals can be
paralysed by declarations of municipal courts that the treaties creating
international jurisdiction are contrary to national constitutions. It has
thus been argued that the US Constitution ‘does not empower the
federal government to subject either the federal courts or the state courts
to review by an international tribunal’.81 In response, one might say
preliminarily that international law does not so much review national
court decisions, in the sense of correcting them, as regarding them as
lacking decisive effect. More importantly, the debate about the enforceability of international decisions within the US is different from the
proposition that international adjudicators may disregard national
decisions.82
To suggest that the alleged requirements of a nation’s own constitution
may neutralise the international undertakings of its government flies in
the face of international law itself. It may happen that such undertakings
are an excess of power under national arrangements. They may give rise
to sanctions under municipal law. But they do not (provided of course that
the appearance of authority is sufficient for the purposes of international
law83) disentitle reliance on those undertakings on the international plane.
Mr. Curzon – I am afraid that I cannot speak for the United States Government.
[Laughter.]’ (Parl. Deb., vol. 46, ser. 4, col. 1253, 25 February 1897.)
81
Mark Weisburd, ‘International Courts and American Courts’, (2000) 21 Michigan
Journal of International Law 877, at p. 938. As a result, he contends, the US Supreme
Court was right in not deferring to the International Court of Justice in the Beard case
involving the Paraguayan national executed in Virginia; and the US is precluded from
accepting the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
82
Professor Weisburd’s attempt to minimise the implications of the awards rendered
under the Treaty of Washington, arguing ibid. at p. 898 that they did not ‘disturb [the]
effects’ of the Supreme Court judgments as to title to captured properties, was
anticipated and answered by Commissioner Pinckney in 1797, and does not in the
least detract from the latter’s successful submissions against the position advanced by
Great Britain; see Note 78 of this chapter.
83
Ever since the analysis by the Permanent Court of International Justice of the famous
Ihlen declaration, involving the renunciation of territorial claims by a Foreign
Minister, in the Eastern Greenland case (Denmark v. Norway) (1933) PCIJ Series A/B, No.
53, any notion that the binding force of NAFTA or of bilateral investment treaties
could be challenged on the international level by the US by reference to national
constitutional strictures appears quite implausible.
The key passage from the PCIJ decision, at p. 71, is well known: ‘The Court
considers it beyond all dispute that a reply of this nature given by the Minister for
Foreign Affairs on behalf of his Government in response to a request by the diplomatic
representative of a foreign Power, in regard to a question falling within his province, is
262
The menace of ‘obscure arbiters’?
To develop constitutional arguments to invalidate international agreements is to follow in the footsteps of Iran, which unsuccessfully sought
to escape international arbitration by invoking Article 139 of the
Constitutional Law of the Islamic Republic (forbidding state entities to
agree with foreign parties in ‘significant’ cases without special parliamentary approval). Whatever their force as a matter of national law, such
arguments evaporate on the international plane.84
As Judge Keba Mbaye (former Vice-President of the International
Court of Justice and former First President of the Supreme Court of
Senegal) put it: ‘A state must not be allowed to cite the provisions of its
law in order to escape from an arbitration that it has already accepted.’85
Lord Mustill has suggested that: ‘Perhaps it should be classed as a
principle of international ordre public.’86 This concept was firmly endorsed
in a landmark arbitration brought by a German private party against
Belgium.87 It has even been incorporated into the municipal law of
Switzerland, where a state party to an arbitration agreement ‘cannot
rely on its own law to contest the arbitrability of a dispute or its own
capacity to be a party to an arbitration’.88
Criticism of international tribunals on the grounds that they impede
democratic policies – whether protection of the environment or the
labour market – is misdirected. International tribunals do not establish
policy. They give affect to international agreements. To deny the authority of international tribunals is to deprive states of the power to make
meaningful promises.89
binding upon the country to which the Minister belongs.’ The following sentence from
Judge Anzilotti’s Dissenting Opinion, at pp. 91–92, is less often cited, but deserves the
fullest attention because it takes the matter one step further (and is in full agreement
with the majority as to the binding effect of the declaration): ‘As regards the question
whether Norwegian constitutional law authorised the Minister for Foreign Affairs to
make the declaration, that is a point which, in my opinion, does not concern the
Danish Government: it was Mr Ihlen’s duty to refrain from giving his reply until he had
obtained any assent that might be requisite under the Norwegian laws.’
84
See Craig, Park and Paulsson, ICC Arbitration, at pp. 44–46; Jan Paulsson, ‘May a State
Invoke its Internal Law to Repudiate Consent to International Commercial
Arbitration?’ (1986) 2 Arbitration International 90.
85
K. Mbaye, ICC International Arbitration: 60 Years On: A Look at the Future (Paris: ICC
Publications No. 412, 1984), at p. 296.
86
M. Mustill, ‘The New Lex Mercatoria: The First Twenty-Five Years’, (1988) 4
Arbitration International 86, at p. 112, footnote 91.
87
Benteler v. Belgium (1984) Journal des Tribunaux 230.
88
Art. 177(2) Loi Fédérale sur le droit international privé.
89
Readers of French do well to study the lengthy and fundamental article published by
Pierre Mayer under the title ‘La neutralisation du pouvoir normative de l’Etat en
matière de contrats d’Etat’, (1986) 113 Journal du droit international 5 where he asks: ‘Is it
263
Denial of Justice in International Law
Criticism of international tribunals on the grounds that they should
operate more efficiently, transparently, coherently, and fairly are entirely
legitimate. But no human institutions are perfect. International arbitral
tribunals have existed for many generations; complaints by those disappointed in their awards have existed for precisely as long. One must be
careful to recognise criticism which is only a cover for the disinclination to
obey international norms, and careful too in not rushing to implement
ostensible reforms which will have the effect only of paralysing their
effective application.
It thus seems that many of those who challenge the legitimacy of
international adjudication are taking aim at the wrong target. They
criticise the principle of the supremacy of international law when their
real complaint has to do with the political choices made by their own
government in making the bargains reflected in international treaties.
The mistake is a dangerous one. For what will happen if they destroy the
authority of international law? What then does it matter if they are right
about the policy? What will they do once they have prevailed – once they
have achieved agreement as to rules for the protection of the environment, the elimination of child labour, the proper treatment of persons
accused of crime, an adjustment of the terms of trade in favour of
impoverished producers denied access to markets? What a hollow victory
indeed, to stand there empty-handed, soon to long for the shattered tool.
not paradoxical that the exaltation of sovereignty over natural resources implies
preventing the sovereign State from entrusting their temporary exploitation by a
foreign corporation possessed of the necessary capital and technology, on the grounds
that the State cannot validly accord the guarantees required by the corporation?’ Id. at
p. 44 (the present author’s translation). He adds ibid.: ‘to allow States to undo their
commitments means in practice to forbid them from making undertakings in the
future’ [permettre aux Etats de se délier, c’est en pratique leur interdire de se lier
dans le futur].
When France wanted to ensure that the Walt Disney Corporation would build
Eurodisneyland outside Paris and not in Spain, the Parliament passed a special law to
authorise the government to accept ICSID jurisdiction in agreements ‘with foreign
corporations for the implementation of operations having a national interest’ (Art. 9,
Law No. 86972 of 19 August 1986, Journal officiel, 22 August 1986, 10190). The US
corporation was adamant about a neutral jurisdiction in the event of a dispute with the
government. That law was thought to overcome legal objections of the Conseil d’ Etat
and the political objections of those who were hostile to the project on cultural grounds.
See Matthieu de Boisséson, ‘Interrogations et doutes sur une évolution législative:
L’article 9 de la loi de 19 août 1986’, (1987) Revue de l’arbitrage 3. (The fact that the
law was in all likelihood not required under a proper reading of the Code civil is
irrelevant for present purposes; see Thomas Clay, ‘Une erreur de codification dans le
Code civil: les dispositions sur l’arbitrage’, in Le Code civil: 1804–2004 (Paris: Dalloz,
2004), 693, at 706.)
264
The menace of ‘obscure arbiters’?
Summary
The mechanism of holding states accountable by international tribunals is
not a new invention. It was much used in the nineteenth century. Disputes
between Great Britain and the United States are particularly illustrative.
In the field of international investments, arbitral tribunals are instruments of the rule of law. Their purpose is not to favour the rich, but to
enable states to make reliable promises. To undermine that reliability is to
deprive the state of a valuable tool.
Arbitral tribunals are not to be blamed for the contents of treaties.
International tribunals tend to irritate respondent states – whether they
are rich or poor – in individual cases; yet their decisions should be
respected in order to achieve the long-term benefits of the rule of law.
Respect for settled and legitimate expectations is a precondition for
healthy international relations.
265
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273
Index
Abs–Shawcross Draft 55
access to justice
denial of 134–8
state immunity and 138–46
direct access to remedies 3
legal advice 175
denial of 182
refusal to consider cases 5, 58, 61, 65, 176–7
acquittal 175
Aguilar Alvarez, Guillermo 230
Alabama Claims case 261
Ambatielos case 127, 134
Amco II case 45, 96, 125–6, 196–8, 218–23, 224,
225
American Convention on Human Rights (1969)
35, 134
amnesties 137
anti-internationalism 228–31
responses to 232–41
appeals
exhaustion of 63
reviewing bodies 244–5, 247, 248, 249
arbitrariness 12
arbitration
awards 213
enforcement 85–6
targeted legislation against 147–9
Calvo Doctrine and 23
obscure arbitrators 228–31
respect for 252–6
repudiation of agreement to arbitrate 149–57
treaties 22
armed forces, state immunity and 140–2
arrest, conditions of 61
Austria 182
Azinian v Mexico case 80–1, 110, 237
Bacchus, James 240–1
bad faith 88
Bagge, Algot 117
Bahrain 70, 73
bail, excessive 175
Ballistini case 137
Bangladesh 147
Barcelona Traction case 83, 255
Betsey case 258
bonds 137
Borchard, Edwin 17, 64
Bronner case 201
Bronstein v Peru case 234–5
Brown (Robert E.) case 50–3, 69, 73, 118, 158
Calvo, Carlos 15, 20
Calvo Doctrine and Clauses 20–4, 28–32, 34,
37, 111
Cecil, Robert Lord 16
censorship 44, 236
Chase case 47
Chattin case 45, 177, 180–1, 220, 253
children (minors), contracts and 200–1
Chorzów Factory case 208, 214, 221, 224–5, 227
Civis Romanus doctrine 15–16
Cleveland, Grover 93
Coatesworth and Powell case 89, 217
codification attempts 93–8
coercion, physical 173–5
Coles and Croswell case 195–6
Colombia 159
gunboat diplomacy in 18–19
Italian treaty with 21
colonial system 67
compensation 208, 209, 213–14
sufficiency of 209–10, 211
time value of money and 226
conditions, abusive 137–8
Constitutional Court case 118
constitutions 262–3
Honduras 29
Portugal 38
Switzerland 12
United States of America 256, 262
contracts
breach 131
El Triunfo case 48–50, 52, 53, 98, 99
excluding international law 32–4
minors and 200–1
Convention on the Law of Responsibility of
States for Damages Done in their Territory
274
Index
to the Person or Property of Foreigners
(1929) 95–6
corruption 195–6
costs 246
courts
access to 134–8
state immunity and 138–46
corruption 195–6
discrimination in 6, 187, 192–5
fundamental breaches of due process 180–92
government interference in 157–63
hearings 205
illegitimate assertion of jurisdiction 178–9
incompetence 89, 200–2
as institutions of nation states 3
manipulation of composition of 163–4
misapplication of law
international law 4–5, 84
national law 69, 73–81, 81
mistakes made by 82–3, 190
prejudice in 186, 192–5
pretence of form 202–4
refusal to hear cases 5, 58, 61, 65, 176–7
retroactive application of laws 199–200
state responsibility for conduct of judiciary
38–44, 187
unreasonable delays 62, 65, 177–8, 218 see also
judgments
Crawford, James 100
crimes, inadequate measures against
perpetrators 170–3
Croft case 75
curtailment of reach of international law 247–9
customary international law 68, 85
duty to provide justice for foreigners and 1
damages see compensation
De Sabla case 88, 218, 222
debt 137
Colombia 18–19
Drago Doctrine and 17
Yuille, Shortridge & Co. case 38, 56, 69–73, 72,
75–6
decision-making
consistency in 241
quality of 254
Declaration on the Human Rights of Individuals
Who are not Nationals of the Country in
Which They Live (1985) 9
decolonisation 67
defence, time for preparation of case 136–7
defendants, holding incommunicado 182
delays 247
unreasonable 62, 65, 177–8, 218
democracy 233, 263
Denham case 74–5
denial of justice 1, 2
codification attempts 93–8
deciding claims 8
definition 4, 7–8, 10, 36, 62, 98
modern 57–9
direct access to remedies 3, 3
evolution
absence of universal standard 10–13
Calvo Doctrine and Clauses 20–4, 28–32,
34, 37, 111
evolving standard 68–9
gunboat diplomacy 15–17, 18–19
impulse to limit scope of doctrine 24–6
modern political realities 26–36
objections of weak states 18–20
private reprisals 13–14, 29, 36, 212
right and might in law of nations 13–18
exhaustion of local remedies and 100–2, 130
effect of ‘forks in road’ 127–9, 130
no fresh starts at international level 126–7
reasonableness and 112–19, 120–6
as substantive requirement 107–12
waiver of exhaustion requirement 102–7, 130
formal 11
human rights conventions/treaties and 8–9,
133–4
investment and 8, 9
judgments in breach of international law
84–7, 89, 90, 98, 99
judgments in breach of national law 87–90
misapplication of law 4–5, 69, 73–81, 81
national law 4, 5, 11, 12, 36
misapplication of law 69, 73–81, 81
non-judicial authorities and 44–53
procedural 5, 7, 11, 98, 167
relationship with rights created by
international law 69–73
renewal of interest in 3
scope for invocation of 2
standards
absence of universal standard 10–13
emergence of universal standard 59–67
evolving standard 68–9
state responsibility for 7
federal systems 90–3
substantive 5, 7, 12, 200
demise of 81–4
judgments in breach of national law 87
technical 5
treaties and 6 see also individual topics
detention, conditions of 61
deterrence 212–15, 225
diplomatic protection 3, 15, 32, 37, 131
gunboat diplomacy 15–17, 18–19
direct access to remedies 3
discrimination 6, 187, 192–5
state immunity and 138–40
Don Pacifico affair 15–17, 171
275
Index
Draft Convention on the International
Responsibility of States for Injuries to
Aliens (1961) 96–7
Draft Convention on the Protection of Foreign
Property 55
Drago Doctrine 17
due process, fundamental breaches of 180–92
Dugard, John 9, 90, 110, 111, 117, 118, 183, 207
Dupuis, Charles 38
Durand, Charles 145
El Oro Mining and Railway Co. case 178
El Triunfo case 48–50, 52, 53, 98, 99, 209, 210
ELSI case 106, 114, 220, 224
errors 82–3, 190
incompetence 89, 200–2
European Convention on Human Rights 5, 8,
54, 97, 133, 134–7, 146, 169, 178, 199, 220
European Court of Human Rights 54
evolution of denial of justice
absence of universal standard 10–13
Calvo Doctrine and Clauses 20–4, 28–32, 34,
37, 111
evolving standard 68–9
gunboat diplomacy 15–17, 18–19
impulse to limit scope of doctrine 24–6
modern political realities 26–36
objections of weak states 18–20
private reprisals 13–14, 29, 36, 212
right and might in law of nations 13–18
exhaustion of local remedies 63, 100–2, 130
effect of ‘forks in road’ 127–9, 130
no fresh starts at international level 126–7
reasonableness and 112–19
application in Loewen case 120–6
as substantive requirement 107–12
waiver of exhaustion requirement 102–7, 130
expropriation 131
Fabiani case 168, 169, 177, 208, 215–16, 219,
222
fair legal process 61, 66, 98, 99
Fawcett, James 90
federal systems, state responsibility in 90–3
Feldman case 70, 73, 110
Finnish Ships case 117, 126, 144
Fish, Hamilton 114
Fitzmaurice, Gerald 63–5, 64, 70, 71, 73, 82–3,
89, 135, 200
Fogarty case 138–40
form, pretence of 202–4
formal denial of justice 11
formalism 60
formalities, abusive 137–8
France 178, 218
Freeman, Alwyn 2, 10, 14, 26, 34, 39, 45, 52,
53, 60, 66, 71, 76, 81, 86, 88, 91, 94,
101–2, 107, 132, 137, 144, 167, 175,
177, 212
futile remedies 115, 117–18
Garcı́a-Amador, Francisco V. 31, 94–5, 96
globalisation 230
Golder case 134–5, 138
Gore, Christopher 258
Greece
Don Pacifico affair 15–17
targeted legislation in 148–9
Grotius, Hugo 62, 65
Guerrero Report 25, 39–40, 94–5
Guggenheim, Paul 83
gunboat diplomacy 15–17
Colombia 18–19
Greece 15–17
Hague Conference (1930) 95
Hague Convention for the Peaceful Resolution
of International Disputes (1907) 22
Hague Peace Conference (1907) 22, 28
Harrison, William Henry 92, 172
Himpurna v Indonesia case 70, 73, 150–3
Holmes, Oliver Wendell 244
Honduras
Constitution (1982) 29
Italian treaty with 22
Howland case 211–12
human rights conventions/treaties 3, 8–9
jurisprudence under 133–4
Idler case 158–63, 163–4, 179, 200–1, 217–18,
220
inadmissibility 11
incompetence 89, 200–2
indirect damages 209–10, 211, 216
individuals, international law and 55, 98, 99
Indonesia 85–6, 150–3
inheritance 74–5
Institute for Sustainable Development 231
Institute of International Law, Draft on the
International Responsibility of States for
Injuries on their Territory to the Person or
Property of Foreigners 95
Inter-American Court of Human Rights 40,
234–5
International Centre for Settlement of
Investment Disputes (ICSID) 28, 34, 103,
105, 247
ad hoc committees 250
International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) 250
International Conferences of American States
21
International Court of Arbitration 250
International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights 5, 9, 35, 134
276
Index
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
Yugoslavia 126
international law 233
contracts excluding 32–4
curtailment of reach of 247–9
customary 68, 85
duty to provide justice for foreigners and 1
individuals and 55, 98, 99
judging national systems and 4, 36
judgments in breach of 84–7, 89, 90, 98, 99
misapplication of 4–5, 84
perceptions of 27
respect for 262
right and might in 13–18
rights created by 69–73, 72
supremacy 264
test of commitment to 252–6
United States of America and 256–61
unlawful legislation under 115
International Law Commission (ILC) 93
Articles on the Responsibility of States for
Internationally Wrongful Acts (2001) 38,
40, 56, 91
Second Report on Diplomatic Protection 110,
115
Third Report on Diplomatic Protection 115
international organisations 54
intervention 17
gunboat diplomacy 15–17, 18–19
investment 29, 250
denial of justice and 8, 9
investors’ access to international tribunals 55
treaties 8, 27, 70, 73, 103, 127
Iran 263
Irizarry y Puente, J. 44, 67
Italy 21, 22
Jay Treaty (1794) 257
Jiménez de Aréchaga, Eduardo 35, 39, 42, 71,
104, 105, 254, 255
Johnson (R. T.) case 146
judges 27
mistakes made by 82–3
refusal to hear cases 5, 58, 61, 65, 176–7
state responsibility for conduct of 38–44, 187
judgments
failure to execute 168
in breach of international law 84–7, 89, 90,
98, 99
in breach of national law 87–90
mistaken 82–3, 190
one-sided 65
juries 60
corruption 195–6
jurisdictional issues 130
illegitimate assertion of jurisdiction 178–9
justice ministries 26, 27
Kerry, John 247, 248
Land and Maritime Boundary between Cameroon and
Nigeria case 235
land grants 88
Last Temptation of Christ case 44, 236
Lauder v Czech Republic case 223, 243
Lauterpacht, Elihu 252
Lauterpacht, Hersch 54, 110, 118, 130, 210
legal advice, access to 175
denial of 182
legislation see national law
legitimacy 244, 264
Legnano, Giovanni da 101
Legum, Barton 242, 244
Leopold, King of the Belgians 67
lex specialis 6
Lithuania 116
locus standi 115
extension of 53–6
Loewen case 6, 41–4, 62, 92, 100, 103–7, 112,
115, 120–6, 182–92, 192–5, 208–9, 227,
228, 232
Lusitania cases 211
McCurdy case 220
McElhinney v Ireland case 140–2, 146
MacGregor, Fernandez 180–1, 181
McKinley, William 93, 172
Mackintosh, James 18
Martini case 69, 73, 83, 208, 215, 219, 222
Mason, Anthony 229
Mbaye, Keba 263
Mercosur 28
Methanex case 231
Mexico 23
Calvo Doctrine and 21
fundamental breaches of due process 180–1
Mexico–US General Claims Commission
29–32, 34
repudiation of arbitration agreements 153–4
Mikva, Abner 185
military, state immunity and 140–2
minors, contracts and 200–1
misapplication of law
international law 4–5, 84
national law 69, 73–81, 81
mistakes
incompetence 89, 200–2
mistaken judgments 82–3, 190
Mondev case 68–9, 76–8, 142–5, 199–200, 253
money
time value of 227see also compensation;
reparation; restitution
Montano case 112, 169–70
Montevideo Conference of American States
(1933) 95
277
Index
moral damages 211
Moyers, Bill 231
multilateral agreements, duty to provide justice
for foreigners and 1
Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency
(MIGA) 28
Mustill, Lord 263
obscure arbitrators 228–31
respect for 252–6
O’Connell, Daniel 126, 202
Orient case 201–2
Nader, Ralph 231
nation states
administration of justice and 1
contracts with 48–50
courts see courts
emergence of 1, 14
federal systems 90–3
freedoms of 108
immunities 138–46
inadequate measures against perpetrators of
crimes 170–3
international law and
attempts to curtail 247–9
judging national systems 4, 36
national courts’ misapplication of 4–5
refusal to recognise international
requirements 15
respect for 262
right and might 13–18
justice ministries 26, 27
legislation see national law
repudiation of agreement to arbitrate 149–57
responsibility for conduct of judiciary 38–44,
187
responsibility for denial of justice 7
National Iranian Oil Co. v Israel case 155–7
national law
denial of justice 4, 5, 11, 12, 36
judgments in breach of 87–90
misapplication 69, 73–81, 81
targeted legislation 147–9
national sovereignty, natural resources and 24
natural resources, sovereignty over 24
Neer case 68, 87, 255
neonationalism (anti-internationalism) 228–31
responses to 232–41
New York Convention on the Recognition and
Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards
(1958) 85–6, 131
non-judicial authorities, denial of justice and
44–53
non-material damage 211
North American Dredging Co. case (1926) 29–32, 34,
37, 111, 255
North American Free Trade Agreement 6,
28, 230–1, 232, 237, 238–9, 239–40,
245
Free Trade Commission 251
Norwegian Loans case 110, 118
Palmerston, Lord 15–17
Panama 164–7
Park, William 230
Pellat case 91
Pennzoil v Texaco case 124
Permanent Court of International Justice 116
permanent tribunals 243
Peru 146
Philis case 137–8
physical coercion 173–5
Pinckney, William 258–9
Pope & Talbot case 238–9
Portugal 38, 147
prejudice 186, 192–5, 213
presumptions 14
pretence of form 202–4
prisoners, treatment of 175
private reprisals 13–14, 29, 36, 212
procedural denial of justice 5, 7, 11, 98, 167
propaganda 233
property rights 229, 232
Public Citizen 231
public pressure, denial of justice and 164–7
Pyramids Oasis case 35
Ralston, Jackson 158
reasonableness, exhaustion of local remedies
and 112–19
application in Loewen case 120–6
redress, thwarted 62
reform proposals 241
refusal to consider cases 5, 58, 61, 65, 176–7
Reisman, Michael 115
religion 236
remedies
compensation 208, 209, 213–14
sufficiency of 209–10, 211
time value of money and 226
direct access to 3
exhaustion of local remedies 63, 100–2, 130
effect of ‘forks in road’ 127–9, 130
no fresh starts at international level 126–7
reasonableness and 112–19, 120–6
as substantive requirement 107–12
waiver of exhaustion requirement 102–7,
130
futile 115, 117–18
offering no reasonable prospect of success 117
reasonably available 116
reparation 207, 226–7
secondary obligation to repair 212
restitution 207, 208–12, 215–18
278
Index
time value of money 226
reparation 207, 226–7
secondary obligation to repair 212
reprisals
gunboat diplomacy 15–17, 18–19
private 13–14, 29, 36, 212
repudiation of agreement to arbitrate 149–57
res judicata principle 81
resistance 228
resources, sovereignty over 24
respect for international law 262
restitution 207, 208–12, 215–18
retroactive application of laws 199–200
reviewing bodies 244–5, 247, 248, 249
Root, Elihu 23–4, 256–7
Roy, Guha 67
Ruden case 146
Russia 168–9
denial of justice and 6
duties created in 69, 72
duty to provide justice for foreigners and 1
human rights conventions/treaties 3, 8–9
jurisprudence under 133–4
investment 27, 70, 73, 103, 127
investment treaties 8
Treaty of Neuilly case 119
tribunals 41
permanent 243
secret 238
selection of members 238
Sartori case 213–14, 225
Schwebel, Stephen 110, 114, 145, 153
secret tribunals 238
Selkirk case 173–4
SGS v Pakistan case 129
show trials 135
Smith v Marianao case 218, 220, 222
Sol, Simon 49
Solomon case 164–7
Solon 19
South Africa 115
sovereignty, natural resources and 24
standards
absence of universal standard 10–13
emergence of universal standard 59–67
evolving standard 68–9
standing see locus standi
Stetson case 173
Stewart, Houston 19
Stran Greek Refineries case 148–9
subjectivity 252–4
substantive denial of justice 5, 7, 12, 200
demise of 81–4
judgments in breach of national law 87
supremacy of international law 264
Switzerland 263
Constitution 12
prohibition of denial of justice in 5, 11–12, 13
targeted legislation 147–9
technical denial of justice 5
terrorism 173
time for preparation of case 136–7
time value of money 226
Timofeyev v Russia case 168–9
treaties
arbitration 22
breach 84–5
Udombana, Nsongurua 102
Undén, Östen 69, 73–81, 119
UNESCO v Boulois case 145
United Kingdom 140–2, 257
United States of America
anti-internationalism in 228, 230–1
responses to 232–41
attempts to curtail international law 247–9
Bahrain treaty with 70, 73
Calvo Doctrine and 21, 22
Constitution 256, 262
failure to execute judgments 169–70
federal system 91–3
inadequate measures against perpetrators of
crimes 171–2
international law and 256–61
Jay Treaty (1794) 257
Mexico–US General Claims Commission
29–32, 34
responsibility for courts in 41–4, 187
retroactive legislation 199–200
state immunity in 142–5
Universal Declaration on Human Rights 5
unreasonable delays 62, 65, 177–8, 218
Vallat, Francis 134
Vattel, Emer de 65, 70, 73, 75
Venezuela 23, 137, 158–63, 168–70
vicarious damage 212–15
Visscher, Charles de 14, 40, 45, 66, 69, 70, 72,
73, 89, 119, 137, 145, 146
Vivendi case 87, 127–9
Vollenhoven, Cornelis Van 29, 45, 180
Waltz, Kenneth 244
Waste Management II case 78–80, 153–4
Werner, Jacques 241
Wharton, Francis 259
World Trade Organization (WTO) 236, 240–1,
242, 244
World Wildlife Fund 231
Yuille, Shortridge & Co. case 38, 56, 69–73, 72,
75–6
279